The Rats’ Nest with Marin Abell

We are The Rats’ Nest, a collective that fabricates big wigs for all occasions. We initially used the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse¹ technique as a springboard to collaboration and shape-shifting fun, folding together our designs to playfully engage with conceptions of identity. We orchestrate events that merge our new-selves with the community in new ways. We are interested in research-through-making, fostering enchantment, and in the unforeseen.

Some of our styles include: a venus fly-trap hairclip; a tuba wig with too many tubes that entangle the player/wearer; a waterfall wig with a ship; a long beard wig that conjoins two people and is used as a jump rope; a cloud wig enabling others to see what they want in your hair²; a wig made of cardboard boxes and shelves to compartmentalize our thoughts³; a web of stringed-together tin can telephones for conference calls; a wig of hands that bind the hair in-place; a tree-trunk wig with a hidden squirrel; a tattooed swim-cap wig; a steampunk wig; a dessert wig with melting ice cream cones; a dandelion wig to represent grandma’s soft white puffy hair; a jellyfish tentacle wig; a Viking helmet wig; a wig of animal tails; a traffic jam car accident wig⁴; a waterslide wig; a string cheese wig; a mansion wig with ivy hair; a wig made of Gandalf’s⁵ beard turned upside-down and superimposed as a haircut onto Russell Crowe; a wig made of voxels⁶; and a coloring book wig for kids with images such as a cactus haircut and a maze haircut.

Project Blog: http://blueskytheratsnest.blogspot.com

____________________________________

1      The Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealist technique in which sentences or images are composed by participants who are unaware of how other compositions will look-the resulting composite phrase or drawing forms a hybrid “body.”

2      Hidden in the cloud wig is a poodle head.

3      The bulging boxes contain pressing secrets.

4      The car whose black-button headlights are out caused the accident.

5      Fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkein’s novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings whose beard turned white when he returned from death.

6     A voxel is also known as a Volumetric Picture Element – similar to a pixel, but represents a volume in three dimensional space.

Student Artist:

Carolyn Ruck,  Greenville OH – Cedarville University

Teen Participants:

Elle Brickhouse, Miamisburg

Arielle Bucio, Kettering

Sam Enright, Dayton

Robbie GaieR, Springfield

Ruthie Herman, Dayton

Ashley Sattler, Beavercreek