Hair as a metaphor.

Charged with association and meaning, hair is thesubject of my work, embracing the peculiar sacredness of our relationship with hair.

It challenges real hair by being larger than life and by presenting it in an unconventional form. Oppositional tensions are made sculpturally with the familiar viewed unfamiliarly.

Legends, rituals, folktales, identities, DNA sampling, stereotypes, value, sacredness, care and attachment are centered around our hair. I like exploring the idea of exemplifying something that we have simultaneously control and no control over.

The aspect of life and death in our identity with our hair raises numerous questions. These questions are both cross cultural and rhetorical.

Semiotically coded, hair as a metaphor embodies its power to both attract and repulse, value and devalue, or become unrecognized weaponry.

The work has hints of historical symbolism. Though I manipulate materials, I enjoy maximizing their beauty by presenting them minimally altered yet in no way denying or changing their identity.

As a symbol, the significance of hair is powerful universally and psychologically.

I attempt to charge space with a poetic elegance. Potently raw, silently strong.

------- CASTILLO