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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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Wednesday
Feb182009

How Personal Culture Effects our Sense of Smell

I think it’s pretty obvious that I love natural essential oils and absolutes, and in the past I was resolute about using only natural ingredients in my perfumes.  However, I have to admit that the synthetic raw materials we have been learning over the past few weeks have been compelling in their own way.  In three weeks we have covered about 90 synthetic raw materials and 60 natural raw materials, and I want to share some of the names and scent descriptions of the synthetic raw materials, just for fun.  

Phenyl ethyl alcohol smell like pink rose petals.

Aldehyde C14 smells exactly like the peach Victoria’s Secret lotion all the girls in my high school wore.

Veltol +, also known as ethyl maltol, smell like all the foods at a carnival mixed into one - caramel apples, buttered popcorn and cotton candy - amplified and sitting right in front of your face.

Methyl octinecarbinate smells like the violet candies in the old-school packaging that my roommate used to buy.

Cashmeran smells ambery, crossed with pine.  Like a handsome man taking a walk in the woods, wearing a scarf.

Amyl salicylate, which my teacher says smells like “fantasy clover” makes me think of Don Draper and what his after-shave would smell like.  The color of Polo Ralph Lauren navy blue, clean and sort of common.

What’s interesting is that one’s sense of smell relies so much on an individual’s memory and culture.  To take a broad example, the french students in my class have no problem recognizing raw materials classified in the anise family.  Anise is flavor of licorice, and a main ingredient in pastis, a french liqueur.  When I smell anise, I think of cinnamon.  To take a more personal example, I have no problem identifying methyl iso eugenol.  To me, it smells like the Knight’s house on Chappaquiddick Island off of Martha’s Vineyard.  My family visits in the summer, and the house smells a little musty from being locked-up in the winters, like the ashes from the fireplace, and the wood with which the house was built.  Technically, methyl iso eugenol is classified as spicy, but each time I sniff it this image crops up in my mind, and the classification is neither here nor there.  Of course, we are reminded that to really know a raw material, we must blend with it and see how it behaves in formulation.

 

DateFebruary 18, 2009 at 7:13 | CommentPost a Comment

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