"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It’s what the sunflowers do.” – Helen Keller

Melanie Bilenker’s Dandelion Clock is as fragile as breath, as enduring as memory. Made with her own greying hair, the pendant captures a moment just before release: a dandelion gone to seed, each filament suspended, waiting for wind. It is a meditation on impermanence—on time as something we breathe, shed, carry, and eventually let go. ⁠
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Bilenker has long drawn with hair, using it as both line and metaphor. “I have woven dandelion chains for most of my life,” she writes,” And tracking time in my own way, drawn with hair for nearly half.” In Dandelion Clock, hair becomes a record of aging—nearly translucent fibers held in tension, recalling the airy architecture of a seedhead. Each one suggests a journey yet to come. ⁠

"How to preserve the transparency, volume, and tension of a puff of dandelion seeds?” Bilenker asks. The result is both a poetic act and a technical feat. While it echoes the aesthetics of Victorian mourning jewelry, Dandelion Clock shifts the tone from grief to grace, from what is lost to what fleetingly, beautifully remains.⁠
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Best known for transforming human hair into miniature tableaus of daily life, Bilenker turns here toward the ephemeral and abstract. Dandelion Clock invites close looking. It holds stillness, but hints at movement. It’s not merely an ornament, but a keepsake of air, care, and attention. ⁠
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Her work is held in the permanent collections of the MFA, Boston; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Arts and Design; and many others. Yet it always returns to the body: intimate, personal, and quietly profound.⁠