For many people art galleries and beauty salons are world’s apart, but for Glen Wilks art and beauty are synonymous.

Mr. Wilks is a local artist and artist director of Kafu Hair & Gallery on Parliament Street in Hamilton. Mr. Wilks recently lectured at the Bermuda National Gallery about the nature of hair, as part of their summer Hair in African Art exhibit, showing in the Mezzanine Level. During Mr. Wilks presentation there were many slides of hairstyles from various African cultures, but there were also a few pictures of some of his own unique, some would say bizarre, hair creations made up for local fashion events. He later likened one of these fashion show hairstyles to a chain bridge.

“I don’t make a separation between my art and my hairstyling,” said Mr. Wilks, whose installation piece show ‘Man Builds Cage’ was held at the Masterworks Gallery at the Botanical Gardens in October 2006. “For me I don’t think there is a disconnect between life and art.”

Mr. Wilks said hairstyling is very diverse, and not far from the fashion industry.

“People express themselves in so many different ways,” he said. “In a conservative place like Bermuda you get fewer people doing anything very avant-garde. When we do shows and fashion events we get the opportunity to really push the envelope a little bit. In a lot of places you have a bigger population of people so you get a bit more diversity in the styles that people are looking for. We can still do very trendy stuff, but in this kind of environment we have to be a bit more mindful of the people in their social environment.”

However, he said Kafu’s client base was large enough for Bermuda, so he did have opportunities to unleash his creativity onto peoples’ heads.

“To a degree I wish we did more avant-garde stuff, but I have a whole bunch of mediums to express so I don’t really focus on what I don’t have,” he said.

Mr. Wilks said he often saw great potential for creative expression just in the everyday hair appointment.

“When you start communicating stuff to people, then they are like, ‘wow, I didn’t realise that I could do that and still feel comfortable with it’,” he said. “There is no point in being bored because of the stuff I can’t do, when there is tons of stuff I can do.”

Mr. Wilks studied hair dressing at various prominent places. He learned about colour at Wella in Germany, and advanced cutting at Vidal Sassoon. He is also a former winner of the Black Hair Olympics Hairstyling competition and won the Bermuda Gold award for best stylist in 2000.

Outside of special events work, Kafu acts as a boutique-style hair salon. The difference is that while clients are having their hair or nails done, they can enjoy art along the way. The gallery/salon is currently showing the work of local artist Trevor Todd.

“This is only his third show, but he has been rather prolific since he started,” said Mr. Wilks. “We like to encourage other artists. Our gallery initially started out giving opportunities to people who couldn’t go to the traditional gallery, or didn’t feel that they could. Our stuff is more modern and less traditional.”

Mr. Wilks describes his own artwork as “more abstract and oblique”.

“I like to make work that produces thoughts and feelings, but it is not immediately apparent what it is trying to communicate,” he said. “Through spending time with it people start to feel and understand it. It is not limited to any single form of expression. I was doing large abstract with strong colours and was very textural.”

Mr. Wilks enjoys various forms of art including music, poetry and photography. Surprisingly, one of his artistic influences is a university education in engineering.

“Everything goes into hair, from fashion to architecture,” said Mr. Wilks. “It is funny how you can take different disciplines and translate it into what you do for hairstyling. I have a strong foundation in engineering, and, if you think about it, cutting hair is all about angles and geometry. It is all about shapes, ovals and curves.”

Mr. Wilks is originally from Jamaica and has been in Bermuda for about 20 years. Mr. Wilks went to the college of Arts, Science and Technology in Jamaica and started out studying engineering because, as a teenager, he thought that would attract all the girls.

“Girls go more for you if you are into steel beams and that type of thing,” he joked. “I got into the hair thing by accident. What I enjoyed about it was the latitude it gave me. I liked the freedom it gave me to combine disciplines, and to travel and to meet people. With art, your methods of expression were limitless.”

He said there were more responsibilities and confines to engineering. A mistake in art is celebrated as creativity, a mistake in engineering causes a bridge to fall down.

“My interests are very diverse, and that somehow manifests itself in my work,” he said. “My artwork is about pure consciousness. This means absorbing everything around you, feeling it, to the point where you connect with it. Then it is like a reservoir. You connect with it and fill up and it comes out in your interaction with other people whatever the need might be, emotional psychological. That comes out into making sure your hairstyle looks right.”

But he said he had to make sure he satisfied the customers’ hair needs more than he satisfied his own creative needs. He wanted his clients to leave the salon feeling beautiful, and gathering compliments about their attractive hairstyles.

Mr. Wilks said he originally came to Bermuda, because permission to work in the United States was taking too long.

“I was between Jamaica and London and planning to go to the United States, but the paperwork for the United States was taking a long time to process,” he said. “A friend said ‘why don’t you come to Bermuda’. I said, ‘why not’, even though I didn’t know very much about it. I didn’t know anything about it, actually. I came here thinking I would spend a year. But it as beautiful place as anywhere else, it was easy to get around, and easy to get to New York, so I stayed.”

Kafu is now holding an open house every other Thursday for the whole summer from 5.30 to 8 p.m. It is an opportunity for clients, or potential clients to meet new people, enjoy art and also learn something about hair and beauty. The open houses feature visiting health and beauty experts.

To learn more about Kafu go to www.kafu.bm.