At The Rust Belt Market: Henna Craze

The offers a unique experience for patrons as well as vendors. The new art market is host to more than 60 artists every weekend. Each week, Patch will feature one artist and get a closer view what the heck they do.

Ferndale Patch: Who are you and what do you do?

Sumeyya Rehman: My name is Sumeyya Rehman and I'm a professional henna artist. Henna is a temporary and painless form of body art that's been around for thousands of years, and is completely natural and safe. Henna body art is most commonly used in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia at times of holidays, blessings, weddings and other special events. Also, a lot of people get henna done just because they want to, it looks nice to show it off in the summer and because it's a good way of test-driving what a real tattoo would be like. The henna stain will stay on your skin for about two weeks and then they fade!

Art is something I've always enjoyed and because henna was around at holidays and parties in my community, I very naturally fell into it at a young age. I've been doing henna now for about 10 years. I am familiar with many different types of henna styles: Indian, Arabic, Moroccan/North African, as well as 'tattoo style' body art and much more.

Ferndale Patch: How did you get your start?

Rehman: Err – it wasn't exactly a start so much as a very slow walk. I'd been doing henna for about 5 years when a friend of a friend noticed my work and asked me to do henna for her wedding. Very reluctantly, I accepted the job. At that point, henna was an obsession and I never thought anyone would pay me for it. I did henna because it was a creative outlet, plus I found it very relaxing and fun to do. To make a long story short – I ended up getting two more henna events out of that wedding and pretty soon, I had to sit down and seriously think about how I was going to handle the business end of things.

Ferndale Patch: What inspires you?

Rehman: Henna, like other forms of art, is rarely ever completely unique. I feel that every henna artist takes a little of what they've seen before and incorporates their own twist in to a design. So for me, there are many, many fantastic artists all over the world whose work I am inspired by. For example, Kiran Sahib from London and Darcy Vasudev from California are two amazing artists whose work has inspired me. In fact, when I was just starting to learn about henna body art, I remember I came across a couple of photos of their work and was completely floored by how perfect it was. I thought of how much I wanted to create something like their work. So I stared at it, sketched it on paper, and then attempted to draw something similar on my hand with a marker. The resulting design was horrible, but was my first attempt. Since then, I've been hooked!

In terms of other inspirations, I have noticed I tend to do my best work or come up with different designs when I'm in a high stress situation. In school, I never did well in chemistry and my notebooks were covered in designs that I thought were unique and different from my other work.

Ferndale Patch: What is it about Rust Belt that attracted you to it?

Rehman: Something about the pull yourself up from your bootstrap mentality I think is what really stuck out to me about The Rust Belt Market. Also, it brings together all types of creative people and I like to be present wherever there's creativity! When I heard of how Chris and Tiffany Best had bought what was previously a run-of-the-mill clothing store and had plans of creating a space that would help local businesses – well that's just awesome! I love that idea and only wish it would be possible in other cities around Michigan, too!

Ferndale Patch: Tell us one thing about your work that would surprise us.

Rehman: Well one fun fact is that natural henna paste has a shelf life of about 24 hours, if kept unfrozen. This is why if you've ever seen me at a henna event, you'll notice a curious little ice pack in which I store my henna paste. It's a bag originally meant to store...well, breast milk. It just works really, really well for henna too!

Henna Craze will be at Rust Belt July 30 & 31. Future Rust Belt dates include Sept. 17 & 18 and Sept. 24 & 25. For henna bookings, visit: www.hennacraze.com or www.facebook.com/hennacraze.