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Today the BBC has posted an article about why we don’t have scent coming through our television sets yet. The article lightly explores the attempts of years past, all the way up to some in-process attempts right now around the VR (Virtual Reality) hubbub. It’s exciting to think about, and whenever something is exciting and flashy, it’s pertinent to consider it critically. While I researched historic films and innovative design projects using scent for my book Nose Dive (2019), I…
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Consequently, everything that concerns creativity is invisible, is a purely spiritual substance. And this work, with this invisible substance, is what I call “social sculpture.” This work with invisible substance is my domain, at first, there is nothing to see. Subsequently, when it becomes corporeal it appears initially in the form of a language. -Joseph Beuys Olfactory art’s immaterial qualities, you cannot see it, disrupts systems of representation. This silent and borderless focus is a radical reaction to the hyper-retinal,…
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I am honored to be a panelist on today’s Digital Scent Festival Panel on Scent + Art + Design. While the topic is humungous and seriously multi-faceted, it’s terrific to have this dialogue with a broader audience. Here is a resource list to help the curious get started on a pilgrimage to discover materials and practices. Thankfully some have vibrant online presences: A Library of Olfactive Material, Glasgow Scotland Aroma Workshop, Chicago Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, Berkeley, CA Experimental…
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” – A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Charles Dickens As an artist in this pandemic, I feel at a great…
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Do not censor yourself right now – make, write, do without judgement. Censorship* is the height of vanity as Martha Graham said, and now is a time where you must create, and destroy outdated definitions of your “self” and do it freely. I am speaking to you – self identified non-artist, or fully indoctrinated “artist” – we are ALL artists, it’s time to be meaningful. We are in crisis mode throughout the world and the only thing we can do…
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Seven years ago I started noticing a pattern with my three young kids, where they would describe things to me and say “mom, isn’t that satisfying?”. They said this after popping packaging bubbles, or messing around with some materials in their playroom. Satisfying seemed a big word to use as a four-year-old, one word with a wide range of interpretations from feeling full to ribaldry. Just like I can’t stand it when technology companies call their software “robust”, spaghetti sauce…
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On this International Woman’s Day in 2019 it’s time to recalibrate your bullshit meters, and slice into truth as best you can with respect to the rearview mirror on prominent female artists. There are two bold, female artists with three hundred years between them, whose vision and talent were overshadowed by the sad tales they were aligned with: one with sexual violence by a man, and one with a violent war by men. The story of their accomplishments needs revisiting…
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After a transcontinental red eye from the West coast, I dropped my bags in the West Village and took the subway uptown. On twenty-eight hours of no sleep, I arrived at the Guggenheim to see the “Hilma af Klimt: Paintings for the Future” show. This was a pilgrimage, as a woman artist who knows 100 percent that we have not been given our due in the art world, that our natural creativity and depth of thinking have not been explored…
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One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them. -Lorrie Moore, Like Life. Vintage, 1990 If home is sweet home, then why is the domestic sound terrifying? Horror stories are rooted around a home, or collection of homes we call a town. Countless artists have avoided direct representation of the home unless it’s a subversive attempt to expose the dark, inner sanctum of the familiar. Naturally artists remove sweetness from the domestic. Sweetness is heavy,…
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On the top of my to do list every day I write “kind, honest, necessary, urgent” – if it’s not any of those things, it’s not on my list and I’m not doing it. I’ve been writing a lot privately about art (more to come publicly), and I have been slow to the draw on my blog. Some urgent matters are occurring in the media, so much so that I’m finally feeling pushed to dissect. For me it’s urgent because…
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