Face to Face: Hair stylist turned artist
capturing ‘500 Faces’ with new project

By Julie Wilson
KyForward correspondent

Madelaine Enochs-Epley is used to hearing people’s life stories. As a former hair stylist, she played the role of therapist to a motley crew of clients-turned-friends as they chatted in her barber’s chair.

All the while, the longtime Lexington resident practiced her art, and now the two worlds have collided with her new project “500 Faces.” “People are coming and sitting, it’s like therapy,” she said. “It’s like hairdressing.”

Through Facebook, word-of-mouth and any means necessary, Enochs-Epley has invited people to come sit for her – not to have their hair done anymore, rather their portraits. The process to get a portrait done is simple: schedule an appointment, show up at her house in south Lexington and sit in the living room for an hour as she scans you up and down to try and capture your personality in a one-of-a-kind portrait.

Yes, sitting. For a whole hour. Enochs-Epley’s husband, Lewis, turns over the enormous hourglass to ensure she sticks to the rules. And many of her muses stare as the sand falls ever so slowly. This hour seems like an eternity. But that’s the beauty of it. “One of the coolest things about the project is that you get to just sit, talk, just be,” she said. “We have conversations for a whole hour, and you realize how little of that we have.”

Enochs-Epley herself sat for a while after she quit her full-time hair stylist job, wondering what her next step in life was to be. “[The idea] came from being in a moment of despair,” she said.

Art has always been her passion, and now felt like the right time to dive in full force. “So I just asked people ‘Do you want a portrait, some conversation and coffee?’” she said. From that simple question has come a total of 192 portraits to date, nearly halfway to her goal of 500. And with four to five people requesting appointments with her every day, she is sure to reach 500 in no time.

The fringe benefit for Enochs-Epley has been the sense of community that surrounds this project. “I feel like I have 192 new friends,” she said. “It started with one face, and now it’s a tapestry of all different connections.”

And that tapestry includes a 105-year-old man, a 9-year-old with autism, a 10-foot python, even a cattleman who is a yoga-practicing vegetarian. “The most powerful thing for me is not that there are so many people but that I get inside the lives of these people,” she said. “I’ve dropped a lot of assumptions because of it.”

The power of Facebook and other forms of social media has helped to propel this project forward. One person shares their portrait online, which inspires at least two friends to approach Enochs-Epley for a portrait session. “It’s bigger than me and that feels good,” she said. “We reach a place that connects us, a place bigger than ourselves.”

And this connection will lead to a community-wide yoga class when the 500th portrait is complete. But for now, Enochs-Epley and her family are getting used to the multitude of eyes staring back at them from the portraits that are being rotated, by way of their home, around different venues in Lexington, including the UK Neuroscience Center, Good Foods Co-op and the LFUCG Wellness Center.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen next,” Enochs-Epley admitted. And that seems to be just the way she likes it.

Award-winning journalist Julie Wilson is the owner and publisher behind Story, which is set to launch in the summer of 2012 to tell the in-depth stories of the people and ideas that shape Kentucky. Julie previously served as the executive editor of Pulse, the bi-monthly magazine of the International SPA Association; and Courier, the monthly publication for the National Tour Association. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, Julie’s work has been featured in Footwear News, Family Safety & Health, HOW magazine, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the parenting blog YummyMummyClub.ca.