H(AIR)
H(AIR) (2011)
13’ H x 6’ diameter (each pole) At Side Street Projects as part of Pasadena Art Night. Funded by a 2011 Individual Artist Grant from City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division.H(AIR) is a celebration of hair, culture, and identity in past and present Northwest Pasadena. H(AIR) is a temporary, site-specific installation featuring two giant, inflatable, nylon barber shop pole sculptures. They were placed on the crumbling remains of the Percy Williams Personality Barber Shop, which was, by all accounts, a lively gathering spot for a predominantly African American Northwest Pasadena neighborhood in the 1950s. H(AIR) incorporated a video component comprised of 53 portraits of residents who now live in the ethnically and culturally diverse Northwest Pasadena. The project opened a dialog about identity and cultural heritage in a neighborhood that has undergone a shift in demographics. The videos were projection-mapped onto the spheres of the barber poles. |
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This version is one of the two videos with stop-motion animation and portraits of local residents that was projected onto the poles.
H(AIR) incorporates a whimsical video component comprised of hundreds of still photographs of Northwest Pasadena residents at various, neighborhood events and colorful red, white, and blue (barbershop colored) motion graphics. The headshots are interspersed with animations of barber tools.