Hair is such an important part of who we are as individuals – it communicates a plethora of messages about exactly who and what we are; gender, age, religion, ethnicity, culture, wealth, rank and even marital status. It has the power to dictate how others should treat us and forms an essential, ritualistic part of our everyday lives.

No one understands this better than Gary Stephens. A US born artist; Stephens first visited South Africa four years ago where he was struck by the unique way in which South Africans dress. With this newfound inspiration, he started a project that saw him move to the country and never look back. I sat down with him to speak about his work, only to learn an important life lesson about the beauty we miss in the ‘everyday’.

“When I arrived in Cape Town, I found a very developed and creative sense of style. Having lived in Italy for ten years, I developed an eye for fashion and thus greatly appreciated the care that people put into their look in South Africa. In Europe fashion is more brand related, it’s all about expensive designers, but here people manage to look ‘sharp’ without affording expensive brand names”.

It was the effort they put into their hair care that intrigued Stephens the most. Inspired by people standing in grocery lines, crowds at soccer games and people crossing the streets, he began a series of drawings that depicted their braided hairstyles in remarkable detail.

He views his work as a process of documenting and paying homage to those who inspire him, and although it is not necessarily about drawing conclusions, he does agree that how a person wears his or her hair in Africa immediately gives an impression of that person’s identity. But more than that, Stephens’ intention is to try to elevate the everyday; making it monumental by painstakingly paying attention to detail and pattern in his art.

When one looks at his work his vision definitely takes shape. Staring into each intricately detailed, interwoven strand of hair opens up a strange and mysterious new world that, at the same time, is somewhat familiar, oddly normal and breathtakingly beautiful.

Stephens maintains that part of an artist’s role is to see beauty, reflect it back to society and raise attention around it. Through his work he hopes to help people experience the beauty they stopped noticing or previously overlooked and allow them to appreciate what they have missed because it is so ‘everyday’.

His message is loud and clear; everyday events and what we regard as “normal” are often extraordinary, if one just takes a little time to have a closer look.

We are constantly surrounded by miracles, but often fail to see them because they exist in ordinary things and daily occurrences. But imagine, if like Gary Stephens, we were all inspired by the ‘common’ things around us? Imagine if we took a little time and had the perspective to find beauty in the supposedly mundane? Then wouldn’t everything be ‘sharp’?

Sometimes conspicuous beauty can become futile, sometimes inconspicuous beauty can take our breath away, sometimes we can overlook beautiful things because we become used to them. Sometimes we need to take a moment to smell the roses and sometimes we need to meet people like Gary Stephens to awaken us to all that is beautiful.