by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
A pair of friends are dressing the townsfolk in colorful hats.
Folk musician Ben Wood and skateboarder Eli Wentzel-Fisher have a project called Hannah's Hats. The hats sell for $25 a piece, and they've sold 13 so far.
"My friend Hannah made me this hat for my birthday a few years ago, and I wore it for awhile," Wentzel-Fisher said. "People always tell me, 'Nice hat,' and it got to the point where it was sort of hard to ignore that we had a good idea, and so we decided we should make it our own."
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They decorate the fronts of soft mesh baseball caps with a variety of materials.
"With the first 13 we made, we took, uh -," he said.
"Love," Wood said.
(They also finish each other's sentences.)
"Yeah, one part love," Wentzel-Fisher said. "Four parts string, one part paint, two parts fabric. With the fabrics, we picked up two skirts at the surplus store and decided that -"
"We didn't want to wear them," Wood said.
"We decided each of those patterns would be the unifying theme throughout the hats," Wentzel-Fisher said. "This purple-maroon with the flowers, and then there's this blue. Every hat has both of those. And a button. I painted all of the buttons - it's great fun. I wish somebody would pay me to paint buttons."
Inside each hat, they attach a rainbow square of cloth, partly as a brand marking, and also because people don't know it's there at first.
"We like the idea that there's always something more to find," he said. "There's always something more to look at."
They sold nine hats at an art show with the Gnot Collective a few weeks back.
"Since then, we've been able to sell a few more to friends and people who ask about hats," Wentzel-Fisher said. "A friend of ours is going to Rainbow Gathering and wants something to represent New Mexico, so she asked us to do one with a New Mexico theme on a bright yellow hat. Other people are like, 'If I get you a hat will you make me a hat?' Which is OK, but I kind of wish people would just let us make them."
They haven't ventured into hat types yet, but there's a market for different styles,
Wood said.
"We talked about cutting the front off of a mesh hat and sewing it onto a hat that would be more conducive for somebody with dreadlocks, because a lot of our friends complain that a lot of our hats are too small," Wentzel-Fisher said.
"Not that we hang out with people with dreads or anything," Wood said, jokingly. "Dirty Rastas have complained."
"Just a few," Wentzel-
Fisher said.
Wood said he likes uniting form and function, making things beautiful and useful.
"It's the desert, and nobody wants melanoma, so you should wear a hat," he said.
"Suppose it was the end of the world," Wentzel-Fisher said. "Wouldn't you want to be wearing an appropriate hat? And if you weren't, could you imagine how embarrassed you'd feel?"
Wentzel-Fisher said owning custom-made articles is more fulfilling.
"You get to feel like you're part of something more personal than the Nike corporation," he said. "You get to support people, real people, when you buy do-it-yourself stuff. You get to see fingerprints. You get to see when I wasn't paying attention to what paint I had on my hands. I leave little scuffs."
He said one of the best parts of making hats is he gets to decide what's cool, and he also appreciates the sewing-circle process. Each hat takes about two to three hours to complete, but they normally work on numerous hats at once, dividing up the time between each one. They work quietly and stay focused.
"A lot of people say, 'OK, we're going to make artwork,' so they sit down and have a conversation, and where the hell's the artwork?" he said. "But when me and Ben would do this, we wouldn't say anything for hours. Just sew, paint, sew. I think that's why it works so well. I don't like collaboration
generally."
"And I don't really like Eli," Wood said.
"But now after the fact, I'm a big fan of collaboration," Wentzel-Fisher said. "And maybe Ben might like me."
"I like Eli," Wood said.
Interested in a hat? E-mail Eli at
GodsOnMySide@hotmail.com
