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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 - Left
Perfume - Right1

From The Artist

Perfume - Right2

Your Voice

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Saturday
Sep122009

Back To School!

I've been back in Grasse now for four days and it has been a whirlwind.  

This semester, most of our time at school is dedicated to creating a perfume, body lotion and candle for the brand of our choice, according to the brief given to us by our sponsor school, Firmenich.  The brief itself is completely indistinguishable from what I imagine are the origins of many other fragrances; our scent has to be "bold and shocking," for the "seductive" independent woman "who wants to live life to the fullest," and whose "loving, innocent trap you can't help but fall into."  (Should I be offended?)  In any case, Tessa, Vikki and I have chosen to work on a (pretend) special edition for Juliette Has A Gun.  

In the meantime, we also have a 2009 trend report due this Monday.  Because I was late getting back to school (Mexico!) Vikki and Tessa did the writing and my job over the weekend is to spruce it up and make it look magical.  I got horribly depressed and had to call a friend at home yesterday though, because all of the marketing jargon was getting to me.  It seems as if all people, referred to strictly as consumers, have been studied and classified so as to best exploit their buying power.  It was particularly scary to read about the "minimalist and purity" consumer trend, which includes marketing products towards people who are socially and environmentally conscientious.  However, if a brand is creating a product that is better for the environment or helps some social group (i.e. fair trade), should their intention, even when it may be purely for profit, matter? Because somewhere in my heart I feel that intentions do matter.  I feel a great hope though that companies such as Tom's Shoes and Pangea Organics, and organizations like Trust Art and Project H are leading the world into a new phase where consumerism, a necessary part of our life, is done with clarity, honesty, and an eye towards the greater good.  

Perfume seems to be particularly vulnerable to exploitative marketing.  We were talking in class the other day and a classmate of mine ran Diesel's recent cologne Only The Brave through a GC (gas chromatography, which can read out the ingredients, both chemical and natural, of an alcohol-based fragrance).  He found that the ingredients in Only The Brave amounted to just 10 euros a kilo.  When you consider that 2.5 oz bottle contains about 85% alcohol as a carrier, leaving just 15% pure perfume ingredients and costs $65, the actual fragrance itself costs just $0.17!!  That means that the majority of that purchase is going towards the packaging, advertising, salaries, and profits.  Of course I believe that salaries and profits should be made, but almost everyone I've talked to, perfume industry insiders included, have felt that the integrity of the scents themselves are being lost as more money is taken away from the raw materials and into other areas, primarily the advertising.

With the Humanity project, my ultimate goal is to show people, and the perfume industry, that fragrance can be used in many other ways rather than the merely superficial and profitable.  Of course I look for simple pleasure in fragrances too, don't get me wrong, but this project is just an example of the opposite, so that we can hopefully meet in some happy middle ground.

DateSeptember 12, 2009 at 12:58 | Comment1 Comment

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