Trust Art is a social platform that is commissioning
ten public artworks over the next year. People are invited to
become shareholders with $1, share with interested friends, and renew culture.

Perfume Fountain for Humanity

A public project led by artist Anne McClain

Project Proposal

The creation of a perfume begins with a brief. For Anne’s project, that brief is to create a scent based on the experience of an act of humanity.

In September of 2009, Anne will travel to the city of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico with a group of twelve friends and perfumers and spend one week volunteering at the Casa de los Angeles, teaching art and visiting the local botanical garden at a day care center for children of single mothers. This act will serve as a tribute to a friend of Anne’s who volunteered at the Casa de los Angeles in 2003 and wrote of her experience, “I want to work with children..and do something to somehow improve their lives. I know that sometimes that means simply being 'present' to them..sharing a hug, holding them, smiling with them. We don't always have to do the big things to make a difference. If in my time of working with them I can benefit their families and the community in which they live I will be grateful.”

In Grasse, France, the capital of the perfume industry, Anne will create the Humanity scent by combining the techniques of modern perfumery and her studies in aromatherapy. Anne's intention is to use the inherent healing and transformative effects of natural plant materials to create a scent to uplift, encourage relaxation and making connections, stimulate compassion, and nurture a sense of letting go.

The Humanity scent will take the form of a fountain of perfumed water. A place of gathering often found in town squares (in Grasse, a fountain is located in the central square where the daily flower market takes place; in San Miguel de Allende the area where the fountain is located is called El Jardin), the fountain will serve as a place for communing, contemplation, and reflection. The creation of the fountain will be a collaborative effort between Anne, glass artist Alan Iwamura, and industrial designer Lance McGregor.

The fountain will be placed in a public space in New York, acting as a gathering place for people to experience the inspiration and meaning behind Humanity. The fountain is meant to transmit positive energy into the public. The question it will pose is: can good will be spread through scent?

About the Artist

Anne McClain is currently attending the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, taking courses in natural and synthetic raw materials, chemistry, and creation. She studied environmental studies, philosophy, and art at Brown University.

Anne fell into scent as an artistic medium through photography. Anne used photography in the same way she uses scents now - to flatten an experience or memory into something tangible. She also studied aromatherapy to understand the psychological effects the distillation of flowers, resins, barks, peels, leaves and other plant materials have on people.

Anne is passionate about revealing scent's power as artistic medium, and the unparalleled beauty of natural raw materials.

Artist's Past Work







Photography naturally lead Anne to scent artistry. Both mediums lend themselves to the pursuit of trying to capture moments and memories. Anne loves the dreamy, lingering quality that the memory of place can give over time. The excitement and displacement of travel leads one to an experience of being untethered. Anne likes to try and take those feelings, somewhere between illusion and reality, and to condense it, to flatten it, to create something so that she can remember what it feels like, always.




108, 2004
While spending four months living in Nepal, Anne studied with a rinpoche and was initiated into Tibetan Buddhism by a lama. This book recounts some of the insights into her spiritual practice, accompanied by photographs.




Transit/Home, 2005
For a period of a few years Anne travelled incessantly visiting Thailand, Indonesia, Baja California, Japan, and Hawaii, all the while thinking of someone she loved. They circled the globe on different paths, sometimes meeting and sometimes not. They took photographs influenced by each other and collected them into a book.




Kept, 2008
Stemming from her fascination with all things relating to memory, Anne was thinking about the phrase 'a kept woman'. She realized that not only would she most likely be keeping herself, she wanted it that way. At the time she was disappointed in love and conceived of a loverʼs gift to herself. she cut a hole through the center of a book about Paris, writing a story of lost love along the edges. In the void she placed a ring and the book became a jewelry box which she kept for herself.

Perfume - Right1

From The Artist

Perfume - Right2

Your Voice

« Titan Arum | Main | The Grasse Institute of Perfumery in the Press »
Sunday
Apr262009

A Random Art History of the Sense of Smell

Once upon a time, philosophers divided the senses into the noble, intellectual senses of sight and hearing, and the proximity senses of taste and touch, considered more physical and animal.  The sense of smell was positioned at the junction of these two groups, and just kind of ignored.  Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Descartes all wrote about the sense of smell at one point or another and dismissed it as a coarse and undeveloped sense, one that leads to more unpleasant experiences than pleasant ones (ha!), or couldn’t deal with how subjective scent is.  

In the 18th century, the Sensualist movement came about.  In opposition to the intellectualizing philosophers of the past, the Sensualists vaunted the importance of feeling as a part of knowledge.  Diderot considered the sense of smell to the sense of the imagination and love.  “Pity the man,” he wrote, “so insensitive as to unmoved by his mistress’s odor.”

The Ongee of the Andaman Islands live in a completely different culture.  So into scent are they, that the universe and everything in it is defined by smell.  Their calendar is constructed on the basis of the odors of flowers which come into bloom at different times of the year.  Each season is named after a particular odor and possesses it’s own distinctive “aroma force.”  Personal identity is also defined by smell: to refer to oneself, one touches the tip of one’s nose, a gesture meaning both “me” and “my odor.”  When greeting someone, the Ongee do not ask “How are you?” but “konyune onornge-tanka? meaning “How is your nose?”  Etiquette requires that if the person answers that he or she feels “heavy with odor,” the greeter must inhale deeply to remove some of the surplus.  If the greeted person feels a bit short of odor energy, it is polite to provide some extra scent by blowing on his or her palm.  The Ongee even paint their skin to trap their odors in their bodies to maintain their energy.  

Perfume historians like to say that the first modern perfume is Jicky from 1889, because it was the first perfume to use synthetic ingredients (as opposed to all natural).  In my opinion, I don’t see why that makes it art or not but I will say that it’s interesting that that is when perfumery came to be considered an Abstract Art, contemporary with Impressionist Painting.  Scent is a lot like Impressionist Painting if you think about it.  It conjures and alludes to something rather than showing it outright.  

I think the moment is ripe for scent as a Conceptual Art movement.  I think the popularity of niche fragrances (last year, 70% of scents sold were niche) shows that consumers are looking not just for better ingredients, but for something more interesting and deep.  Artists like Carrie Patterson and Sissel Tolaas are using scent as a medium.  And I’m thinking about the human heart and the tree of life as representations for compassion and humanity.  


Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>