Shower Hairs: Taking Art Into the Bath Tub

Shower Strands

Lucy Gafford, a multimedia artist from Mobile, Alabama, creates artworks with her own shower hair. The practice started when Gafford watched loose strands of her locks wash down the drain. A daily ritual to prevent clogs, she wipes the hair off her hands onto her shower walls. One morning in 2014, she noticed the strands had formed the shape of a squirrel. Four years later, this prodigious shower artist has shared more than 400 shower hair drawings.

She’s made Princess Leia from Star Wars, Santa Claus, and Picasso’s Self Portrait—along with all kinds of cute animals, portraits of her friends and family, and even celebrities faces.

“Initially, it was intended to be funny, but I kept doing it—soon becoming obsessed with seeing how complicated I could get using my hair to create images.”—Lucy Gafford

What started with blunt clumps of hair forming rough shapes has now turned into detailed contour drawings where Gafford places each strand with utmost care. She uses her own hair for the drawings, though admits that some of her husbands might have snuck in at some point. Posting her work on social media, it seems people can relate to her medium of showers hair.