By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Four coifed heads sat on the tabletop.

Birds and feathers rested on one. One sported an acrylic Mardi Gras mask. One perched atop a flower vase. And from another, a Chinese take-out box sprouted from the forehead.

Clustered together in a semicircle, they resembled Mount Rushmore with an extreme makeover.

Cutting hair is craft. This is hair art.

For the past four years, Bernard’s School of Hair Fashion in Lewiston has run an in-house art contest for its students.

It’s aim is to free students, to encourage them to go to extremes.

“In this job, you have limits every day,” instructor Jan Bartlett said. After all, few customers plop into a salon chair and say, “Gimme something new. Take a risk.”

Here, on mannequin heads endowed with real hair, 21 students let loose. They competed in four categories: braiding, bridal, nails and avant-garde.

“I call mine The Goddess of Nature,'” said Tammy McKeen of Lisbon, looking at the feathered head on the table.

The inspiration came from her brother-in-law, a bird watcher.

“I wanted to create a whole nest,” McKeen said. Instead, the head creates a kind of forest.

Bushy and seemingly random, the hair pokes through a layer of grass like a persistent perennial. Wire holds bunches of hair aloft. Among the remaining undergrowth are flowers and feathers and two craft store birds, each made from mushrooms.

The presentation doesn’t stop at the hairline. Feathers encircle the mannequin’s right eye and a large red magnolia, created from acrylic paint, cover the left.

In all, McKeen spent 10 hours on the fake head, which she hopes to display one day when she opens her own shop.

She’s attached to it, though not as much as some people.

“Some girls name theirs,” she said. “I don’t.”

However, her work on the fake head has forced a reappraisal of the real one above her shoulders.

“I learned I had more in my head than I ever thought,” McKeen said.