During her time as a high school art teacher in New Jersey, artist So Yoon Lym was very taken with the intricate cornrow hairdos of her students.

I loved the many beautiful hair styles of both my male and female students… I would sometimes run after students in the hallway and request that they stop by room 108 briefly to allow me to take a picture of their hair and braid patterns.I was always pleasantly surprised and pleased that everyone always stopped by and allowed me to document their hair style. All my students if they had an interesting or unusual hair and braid pattern always allowed me to take pictures as well.  I knew I wanted to use these photographs as reference material for a future art project but wasn’t sure what I would do with them.

So she started painting them.

Braided Masterpieces (literally) (Natural Selection)