Now that a new year has come, one of my biggest resolutions is to write more. I’ve missed it, missed interacting through this blog and missed you, my readers. And in the past year or so I’ve missed great opportunities to talk about some of the amazing Art and Perfume events that I have had the good fortune to be a part of. It seems silly now to go back and try to recapture time but from now on I want to get out and discuss what’s happening in smell culture, the arts and even the very cool current that seems to be bridging art and scent. I find that last bit especially exhilarating: that artists are bringing aroma into their work as an interactive element as well as tapping into the deepest recesses of the mind / body to get people to feel even more as they view / smell / touch/ walk through and walk around what they are experiencing. I just love what’s been happening in the last few years and even more what’s coming up.
Last October I started work on three new designs to speak to, and launch concurrently with, the Denver Art Museum’s opening of their Passport to Paris exhibit. The show itself is quite large and spans quite the timeline, from the 17th Century to the dawn of the 20th. It is actually three smaller shows in different galleries: Court to Café, Nature as Muse and Master Drawings. I am lucky enough to have developed a great relationship with DAM and was asked to create scents for this exhibit. As usual, was given carte blanche to create whatever I wished. Since I love to incorporate the currents of perfume history that run along side that of art history and culture, I decided to speak to the 19th Century and Belle Epoque elements in the show and bring to light some of the technological breakthroughs in chemistry that came at that time and how they influenced the great creative surge in perfumery that spurred the first perfume renaissance at the fin de siecle. My chosen aroma molecules were: aldehydes (specifically strawberry aldehyde and hexyl cinnamaldehyde), ionones (alpha and beta), vanillin and coumarin. From these the Passport to Paris collection was born. I am really pleased to say that these design have received some wonderful critical acclaim ( you can read what CaFleureBon, Perfume Shrine (Passport a` Paris), Now Smell This (Amouse Bouche) and The Non-Blonde (in three reviews: Passport a` Paris, Vers la Violette, and Amouse Bouche) had to say about them. I’m happy to say that the Passport to Paris Collection was among the Non-Blonde’s Best of 2013.
Now, on January 31, at Denver Art Museum, I will get to present another new creation designed with inspiration from their permanent collection (on the 6th Floor Gallery; I chose the striking image of “Young Girl with Flowers” by Eugene Carriere) for their “Untitled #63” event and talk about French perfume history during the 18th and 19th Centuries. Of course, I will be there to discuss my process as an aroma artist and how the painting (as well as visual art and aesthetics in general) influenced my work. It’s going to be great evening and I urge anyone who will be in the Denver area on the 31st to come and spend some time with us. It’s also exciting because the event will be kind of like an unveiling: the museum goers will be the first to smell a new design created especially for the Untitled. (How cool is that??) I don’t want to give too much away in this post but I am really thrilled by what I have developed so far. I’ll have to share more about it after I have presented it next week. To learn more about DAM’s untitled series you can check out the untitled facebook page.
DSH notebook 