[Today’s face brought to you by guest artist Soren Melville!]
Sheila Spacey is an architect. Her hair reflects this. She practically shellacs it, and trims the results like topiary. The hard angles and geometric protrusions bespeak her personal design philosophy, as do the bright colors. She doesn’t dye her hair. She uses wood stain.
Architecture is a recent thing for Shiela. Before this, she made her living as an artisinal gift-wrapper. She was renowned for her deft fingers and audacious design strategies. Some of her creations were so flamboyant that they were impossible to lift or move without damaging – the clients had to open the gifts in her studio. At her clients’ request, she occasionally gift-wrapped the wrappings of gifts she had wrapped. Sometimes the boxes she wrapped were empty. All in all, it was a bit of a disappointment when she decided to go into architecture.
She’d fallen in love with the craft via the interior design magazines she sometimes cannibalized for her wrapping. Enough with wrapping things, she wanted to wrap people. Her clients pled with her, implored her to consider the fates of their future holidays, but she ceased to take commissions and poured her earnings into design school.
Now she answers phones at a rather prestigious firm. Occasionally she will be called in to draw something someone else has designed, or to cut out a stencil. She is not very well liked. But each month she bathes her hair in mineral spirits and constructs a new labyrinth inside it, to show them the wonders she is capable of.
[Face by Soren Melville]