CREDIT: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen Chrystl Rijkeboer of Holland has crocheted life-sized humans out of real human hair. Her work is featured with others in the opening of an exhibition at L'Imagier in Aylmer.

Maybe it is time you started wondering what happens to the hair clippings that fall to the floor as you are being sheared at a barber shop or beauty salon. These discarded bits of you and your DNA just might be retrieved, lovingly handled by a stranger, perhaps spun into yarn and then turned into art for all to see.

If this sounds as creepy as someone pawing through your laundry basket or underwear drawer, then don't go see the latest exhibition at Centre d'exposition l'Imagier in the Aylmer area of Gatineau. The exhibition is entitled HAIRs. The show is curated by Petra Halkes of Ottawa and includes the works of three hair-obsessed artists, Karen Jordon of Ottawa, Antonia Lancaster of Toronto and Chrystl Rijkeboer of Holland.

Halkes and the artists swear they are not part of a cult. You might, however, have your doubts, especially when you walk into the gallery and see Perfect Stranger, two life-sized people stretched out on the floor. This man and woman were each crocheted by Rijkeboer from human hair over a six-month period.

Each figure contains the DNA of many people now forced in to the same body for eternity. Hair, it seems, is meant to last forever. Just check out some old coffins.

Rijkeboer gets most of her hair from the discards of a wig-maker. The hair is spun into yarn, rolled into a ball and then crocheted. The resulting material is thick and heavy, certainly far heavier and more tightly woven than a knit scarf, for example. People have been known to pet these lifelike figures and then suddenly recoil in horror when told what they are caressing.

The Perfect Stranger twosome looks remarkably like The Bog People, those ancient bodies preserved in European swamps that came to visit the Canadian Museum of Civilization a few years ago. Both the hairy people and The Bog People look like real people, but deflated.

Toronto's Lancaster also uses the hair of strangers. She gets hers from a beauty school. She, too, likes to co-mingle the hair and DNA of perfect strangers. She attaches clumps of hair to ribbons of wide masking tape. The rows of tape form a grid pattern. The hair and tape are placed in such a way they form a giant triangle, not unlike a gigantic version of a woman's pubic region.

The hair in Lancaster's installation, entitled Archive, comes in varying hues, reflecting the multicultural nature of Toronto. The grid pattern of the masking tape resembles an aerial view of intersecting streets. The overall effect is to create a microcosm of a city filled with many hairy people.

Jordon offers about 100 tiny sculptures created from her own hair. "Every time I wash my hair, I harvest it," she says. Strands of this "harvested" hair are saved and bound with white cotton string to form foot-long, vertical sculptures resembling ginseng roots. Each is unique and contains about two days' worth of hair naturally expelled by the scalp.

Jordon's installation called Cultivars represents about three years of "harvesting." Another seven years' worth of hair, wound and bound, did not make it to Aylmer.

Jordon is a process-oriented artist. For her, the means is often the end and hair just a handy medium. She also likes poking toothpicks, thousands of toothpicks, into a wall in a grid pattern. But that's another story.

Using human hair in art is not new. Our Victorian ancestors used human hair for everything from wreaths to keepsakes inside lockets. These treasured items were usually constructed from the hair of dead loved ones.

These Victorian trinkets allowed the dead, in a way, to become immortal. The Aylmer show is also designed to make you think about human mortality and immortality. But that's not all.

Hair is terribly complex. A new hairdo is often linked to a new start in life. But a haircut can also be a punishment. Just ask the women of European countries whose heads were shaved because they consorted with Nazi soldiers during the Second World War.

Literature, myths and pop culture are filled with stories of hair: Delilah weakening Samson by cutting his hair; Rapunzel letting down her hair from her tower cell; the 1960s counter-culture stage show Hair.

On your head, hair can be alluring. It is deemed so sexy in some cultures that it must be covered to avoid exciting males. But once cut, or stuck in the drain, hair becomes yucky, meant only for the garbage.

But what if it never makes it to the garbage? What if someone retrieves it, lovingly handles it and crochets it into some life-sized voodoo doll? How would you like that to happen to your bodily castoffs?

Something to think about on your next trip to Aylmer. The exhibition continues until June 5.

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Every time you buy a Loto-Quebec lottery ticket or throw some money into the slots at Gatineau's Casino du Lac-Leamy, chances are you are helping an Ottawa artist. Yes, an Ottawa artist.

Loto-Quebec and its money-making casinos are big art collectors and exhibitors. The Gatineau casino, for example, mounts several exhibitions a year by artists from the Outaouais and Ottawa. They buy at least one painting from each show.

Just last week, Loto-Quebec sponsored an exhibition at Gatineau's Galerie Montcalm of some of the best artists in this region. The works of 54 artists, many from the Ontario side of the border, were displayed; Loto-Quebec bought 12.

Generally, it was difficult to argue with Loto-Quebec's choices. The works they bought from the likes of Shahla Bahrami, Jacques Charboneau and Anna Luczak were, indeed, among the best. But many heads shook in disbelief when the spectacular painting Extension by Kathryn Drysdale of Wakefield, did not make the final cut. Extension, a dramatic picture of a woman wrestling with her demons, was the favourite of many people sipping wine at the packed opening night ceremonies last week.

The exhibition continues until June 12.

Coming Soon

- Alberta Scene is over but Edmonton artist Jane Ash Poitras has an exhibition at Galerie d'Art Vincent in the Chateau Laurier Hotel May 19-29 of her dramatic collages and paintings celebrating aboriginal life.

- Cecile Boucher and Hans Mettler explore the world of travel and postcards in a joint exhibition at Karsh-Masson Gallery in Ottawa from May 19 to July 3.

- Savour portrait-like paintings by Heidi Conrod at Espace Odyssee at Gatineau's Maison de la culture from May 13 to Aug. 28.

- Marie-France Nitski paints like a Picasso-loving primitive on acid; her newest show runs May 20 to June 21 at Galerie McKenzie Marcotte in Wakefield.