Io Palmer's "Workspace"

Last Friday, a group of us from school traveled to Crawfordsville, Indiana to see Io Palmer's exhibition, Workspace at Wabash College. Io came to Ball State and gave a lecture about her work at the end of February and seeing this show was on my must-do list before it closed. I was enamored by her Art Stars dress that hovered over a vast collections of drawings of hair on napkins. They resembled tiles and ironically the grain of the wood floor worked very well with the intricate representations of various types of hair.

I have a love of artwork that shows a vast collection of objects especially when they look as detailed as the thousands of bobby pins she used to make this piece.

The photos below shows three details from the 2008 series Combs and Hairballs. Check out this link to see the group in its entirety.  It was so hard to pick a favorite as some of the combs held my attention more than the pile of synthetic hair yet some of the hairballs had such character, they were hard not to resist. We spent the longest time discussing the merits of two combs versus two, red or blond, small or large.

I was also fascinated by the decor in the women's bathroom.

Overall, I am so glad to see Io's work in Indiana especially at one of the four men's colleges left in the nation! More on her napkin project very soon.