Papergirl Leeds: Exhibition opening night.

I was absoultely delighted a couple of weeks ago, on sending my 'know before you grow: the barber's guide' moustache poster to the papergirl leeds grouped to have been asked to take an active role within the exhibition- creating a papercrafts moustache instillation, inspired by some photographs I have taken in the past...

Along with my partner (who became a brilliant assistant, papercutter and photographer (I think I should be watching my back!)), we constructed the paper mobile by cutting symmetrical moustaches freehand- and then attaching them to cotton threads to suspend from the ceiling.

We decided to pick black, cream, white, brown, and orange as the colours- keeping a natural tone (for hair colours), but with the orange and red vibrantly popping against the duller, more neutral colours.

We were also "assigned" the location of a square tile panel from the roof- it was really interesting to see the moustaches in quite a gridded, structured format- as the times I had used them in the past, they had been stuck quite sparadically and abstractly. Here are some pictures Alex kindly took of the event whilst I was working...

(Please excuse my terrible face in ALL of these pictures...)

A really enjoyable few hours out, I was delighted to see the response to the small instillation work- a lot of people coming over, asking what we were upto and engaging long and wonderful talks about weird and wonderful 'taches- along with people really taking the time to stop and absorb my poster on the wall- many chuckling at it, telling their friends which moustache they would grow and even taking photographs of it. Happy times in Sophie's world.

This, though a reasonably small scale, has given me my first taste of gallery-viewings. Although I did exhibitions at college, this has been the first real time where genuine strangers have come up to me and complimented my work, which feels wonderful- my main ambition as a designer, however corny it may sound, is to make people happy- and to engage and respond to my work. If I could have gone away with just one person having a smile on their face, then I'd be happy.

Thanks so much to third year Vis Com student Laura Jordan for organising the event, and asking me to take part in this way. I feel very privaleged indeed.