Here is the flier for the show Scents & Medical Sensibility at Smith Farm's Healing Arts Gallery in Washington DC. I'm so pleased that the Humanity Organ will once again be on display, with some pretty amazing other artists! The opening reception is March 11th at 6pm, so if you are in the area, please come by.
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The lovely Carl just sent over some photos he took from the Humanity Fragrance launch event at Sigerson Morrison on February 9th. What a great time!
The response to the fragrance has been wonderful, and you can still get yours by stopping by Sigerson Morrison's Nolita location or ordering online. Check out Refinery 29's sweet little review, naming the Humanity Fragrance as one of seven scents for Spring!
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Fire, Air, Earth & Water by Gayil Nalls
There are nine artists: Peter Hopkins, Gayil Nalls, Josee Lepage and Tobias Wong, Jiayi and Shih-wen Young,Mathias Kessler, Carrie Paterson, and myself.
Scents and Medical Sensibilities is open from March 3rd - May 1st, and the opening reception is March 11th, from 6 - 8pm.
]]>Cool Hunting - Fourteen Heart-Shaped Design Gift's for Valentine's Day
PSFK - 8 Avant-Garde Perfume Bottle Designs
Now Smell This - Humanity ~ New Perfume
Lovely Package - Humanity Fragrance
Thanks to everyone for the support!!
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And we're off! The Humanity fragrance fundraiser has launched, and you can now pick up your first edition handmade bottle on our site: www.humanityfragrance.com. It's the perfect gift for Valentine's Day!
The Humanity fragrance is based around the Indian white lotus flower, a symbol of purity in ancient cultures. Rich with vanilla inflections with notes of maté tea and sustainable sandalwood from Australia, the scent is fresh, sheer, floral and woody, and comes in a blended in a base of three organic oils.
The anatomical heart inspired bottles with white glass corks were designed by Lance McGregor and Alan Iwamura, and handmade by Alan. Each bottle is engraved with the edition number. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the manufacture of the fountain this spring. The Humanity fragrance is available online now as well as at Sigerson Morrison in Soho beginning February 9th.
To see the "making of..." pictures, click here.
And a special shout out to our friend Claire for the amazing photographs!
]]>Check back soon! www.humanityfragrance.com
Plaster panel with a lily-pad embedded and painted into it.
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The Open Space Alliance in partnership with Trust Art have put together a show a silent auction to raise money for public art in Brooklyn parks. I have been asked to participate and created a piece called The Humanity Organ. The shelves which line a laboratory and hold the ingredients of a perfumer's palate is called an organ. This piece carries the twenty-one ingredients which have been used in the working drafts of the fragrance for the fountain. At the base of the piece is a candle scented with drafts #8 and 10.
Go to eBay to bid on this piece. The starting bid is $500 and the auction closes on December 11 at 9pm (EST).
The work is on view until December 11 at 30 Dobbins Street in Williamsburg. There is a closing reception open to the public on December 11, 6-10pm. Join us if you are in Brooklyn!
More info at www.bravebrooklyn.com
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Over the past few months, Alan, Lance and I have been finalizing the design for the fountain so that construction can begin in early 2010. Lance has made some incredible renderings showing a marble base which holds a glass heart. From there, perfumed water will flow calmly, creating a space for contemplation and reflection. Click here to check out the full gallery. ]]>
What is the scent of compassion?
Ever since this project started I have been asking myself that question and I think I am getting closer to an answer. For one, the central ingredient I have been building around is white lotus. It has a warm, enveloping smell reminiscent of vanilla. But more importantly, lotus's significance as a symbol of divine beauty and it's aromatherpeautic use as an aid to meditation make this ingredient special.
Nelumbo Nucifera, or white lotus flower.
Lotus Temple, Delhi, India.
We've just finished editing the over five hundred photographs taken between Harry and myself in San Miguel de Allende. It was hard to choose from all the pictures of those sweet kids but here's a look at the week we spent volunteering at the Casa de los Angeles. Click here to check out the gallery.]]>
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ONLINE VERSION OF ARTICLE IS HERE THE ESSENCE OF HUMANITY
Scents are possibly one of the most difficult things to translate into something written or visual. However, the New York artist Anne McClain has proposed to create a perfume that evokes the human, as well as change the attitude of those who wear it.
The essence, which will take the name Humanity, will flow from a fountain at a public park in Brooklyn, to transmit to passerby feelings of love and peace.
The installation forms part of Trust Art, an initiative founded by Seth Aylmer and Jose Serrano-Reyes, as a kind of stock market for art, in which common citizens become shareholders with as little as one dollar towards the realization of ten projects by emerging artists.
McClain studied the basic principles of perfumery at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, in the south of France, and combined it with her knowledge of aromatherapy.
"To make perfumes based on an act of social consciousness has become something more important than I had imagined," she says in the interview.
To approach the idea of what it means to be human, McClain spent a week as a volunteer at the Casa de los Angeles, in San Miguel de Allende, a day care center for orphans and children of women who come to sell their wares at the local market.
"To be with these children made me think differently about our world. When you help someone and separate your own goals from all of that you think of humanity in a broader sense."
The artist took some herbs from San Miguel de Allende, which will be integrated into the essence she is working on.
With the Humanity fragrance, McClain seeks to break the artificial, superficial, sensual, and glamorous image that the perfume industry sells.
"It's a different plane of reality. When you see a commerciial for some perfume you ask yourself 'What is this?' Can we create something that inspires this industry to think differently about what it's doing, and that provokes the social consciousness of the world we live in, instead of that material, sexual, fantasy that exists on a different level?" asks Jose Serrano-Reyes.
The fountain that McClain plans to install in Brooklyn will be made of glass, conceived by glass artist Alan Iwamura and the industrial designer Lance McGregor.
"The fountain will be a mechanism for something that started out as an act of good will and inspires contemplation and meditation," adds Serrano-Reyes.
McClain thinks about perfume in a philosophical way, using its relationship to aromatherapy as a departure point; scent reflects people's personalities, as well as evoking certain moments or emotions.
If the perfume industry can create more personal fragrances, and guided more towards the artisanal, as is happening in fashion and music, it be something else," she says.
The photographer trusts that this essence can become a symbol for a generation of artists that think about the social and participatory value of art, more than how much money can be made from the piece.
The glass sculpture will be installed in the public space in Brooklyn for between three and six months and will then be auctioned, returning value to every shareholder invested in the project.
]]>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.
]]>Si, se puede from Casa de los Angeles on Vimeo is a documentary about the center by volunteer Marisa Bollman.
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