How Trish Dool creates her avant garde hair designs

A pair of futuristic sculptural wigs are among the more unusual works in "À La Mode: The Language of Fashion in Art," a juried exhibition on view at Mark Arts.

"OBot 1" and "OBot 3" are the work of Trish Dool, an award-winning Wichita hair artist. They won an honorable mention in the juried show, which is on view through March 21 in the art center's Weidemann Gallery. 

The hair designs resemble a cluster of blond pipes, open to expose the red filament inside. They're the product of a winding creative path that began with photos Dool took from the passenger seat of her husband's car on a July 2024 trip to visit her in-laws in Osborn, Kansas. 

On that summer road trip, Dool decided to use the Kansas landscape as her inspiration for her next collection. She was struck by how the color fields of blue and green were interrupted by flashes of color from signage, tractors, and the architecture of farming. 

"I was looking at the landscape and thinking how beautiful it is. Kansas is beautiful," Dool said. "The sky was so blue, and I like the contrast of the natural colors with the orange and yellow and red and John Deere green."

She organized the photos in a new album on her phone. These function as "mood boards" for each project. Then Dool went looking for inspiration. She added images by Wichita artist Tim Stone, who often plays with the idea of landscape in his dreamy paintings. A pattern made from water droplets and condensation on her shower door reminded her of the hazy qualify of the paintings, and into the album it went. 

Dool added inspiration images from hair artists she follows on Instagram, and an initial idea began to take shape. She got far enough into the landscape concept to begin sketching a design on paper using colored pencils. But at some point, she ran across a look by Sylvestre Finold that sent her in in a different direction. 

"I like to look at something and say, Man I wonder how they did that," Dool said. The best avant garde stylists, like Efi Davies, Daria Lätt, and Peter Gray use hair as material, she says. She'll spend hours in her basement studio working to make the process her own, listening to First Wave on Sirius XM, surrounded by wigs, materials, and sketches, her lab mix Buddy at her side.

Finold's design inspired Dool to construct pipe-like tubes with hair that felt to her both otherworldly and robotic. For the photo shoot, the models were painted with silver makeup. It felt like a concept that fit our artificial-intelligence-obsessed era. 

"Obviously, I left the landscape far behind," Dool said. "I don't know how I got here." 

Except she kind of does, thanks to the mood board, and she knows she can retrace her steps if she needs to — documenting her process is a way of leaving herself "a trail of breadcrumbs."  

"It's like you're on a road and you get curious about going down a path, and you can always walk back to the main road," she said. "You don't have to follow the road that you thought was leading you to the right place."

Dool entered the OBot series in the avant garde category for the 2025 North American Hairstyling Awards, sometimes called "the Oscars of Hair." She won the top award in the category last year for a series of dramatic looks she conjured out of hair, painted sticks and dried palm fronds, and faux fur pom poms. 

Having her work validated by her peers has been an honor, Dool says, but the soft-spoken blonde, who refers to herself as a hairdresser rather than a stylist or an artist, also feels like an imposter sometimes. 

Dool began working for Eric Fisher 29 years ago, straight out of hair school. She now serves as the creative director for his eponymous salon. "(Eric) taught me how to do hair behind the chair, but also how to do hair for a studio session," she said. The pair spend nearly every Friday in Fisher's photography studio, what Dool refers to as their "happy place." 

"I love doing photo shoots & bringing looks to life in front of the camera — it’s my favorite thing to do," Dool said. Fisher took the photos that hang behind the mannequins in "À La Mode" at Mark Arts. In recent years, she has ventured into creating live shows for the annual Eric Fisher Salon/Eric Fisher Academy Summit.

Other Dool collaborattors include Alicia Ybarra of Vanya Designs and artist/director Wade Hampton. Dool received another award for her work on an editorial campaign for Ybarra's couture bridal line. And Hampton, with whom she has worked on films, painted a dress she made for a shoot from diapers, safety pins, a hoop skirt, and glue guns. 

Hampton's influence has inspired her to be a bit looser with her own creative practice. 

"I watched him paint over his house, and, when he didn't like something about the painting, he took this wet cloth and wiped the whole thing," Dool remembered. "'I was like, What are you doing? It scared me. I felt like that was brave." She went back to a project she was fussing over in her studio and "roughed it up" a bit. "It changed it, you know." 

Dool is making more and more of the clothes to pair with her hair designs. She just bought a cheap sewing machine, and she wants to experiment with sewing hair, too. 

But she hasn't forgotten her initial idea of a Kansas-landscape-inspired hair collection. "I'm going go back," she said. "I feel like there's something there."

Emily Christensen is a freelance journalist and one of the co-founders of the SHOUT. She is a past fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and a recipient of an Arts Writing Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation.

Kendra Cremin is a photographer, artist and part-time instructor at Wichita State. Her areas of focus are lifestyle, commercial, fine art, documentary photography, and where to get her next cup of coffee. 

The latest from the SHOUT

Form follows material: ceramics by David Long at Bethel College

The ceramicist and educator presents 54 works in “Untethered,” an exhibition that reflects a career spent exploring the nature of clay. It’s on view at the Robert W. Regier Gallery through March 14.

The SHOUTTeri Mott

Wichita State celebrates 50 years of its student playwriting competition with bloody ‘The Angel of Death’

The national competition has developed shows by young playwrights for half a century. This year’s winner is on stage this week.

The SHOUTAnne Welsbacher

Wichita’s improv scene is booming: ‘We’re pretty serious about our funny’

Say What?!, Flying Pig Improv, First Draft and Parking Lot Sushi each offer audiences regular, one-of-a-kind performances.

The SHOUTCecilia Green

A new statewide network seeks to boost Kansas government support for arts organizations

Kansas ranks 47th in state funding for the arts. The Kansas Arts Network wants to change that.

The SHOUTTrace Salzbrenner