Walk Details
Date: October 17, 2020
Time: 2:30 pm
Weather: Sunny
Temperature: 93 degrees Fahrenheit
Air Quality Index: 48
The Creative Exercise
Recreate a scent from your walk using a visual medium - drawing, photography, sculpture, digital media, or other
Attempt to bring home or reproduce the scents of your walk (bring home flowers, leaves or dirt; crush or dry plant matter or try this vaporization method from Science Friday!) share some record of this via your blog
Results
Reflections
I found myself gravitating towards plants that have edible portions (the wild grape, the blackberry, random rosemary bushes) to explore scents. I think this was an easier way to begin the walk because I knew roughly what I should expect to smell from those plants. As I continued along, searching for flowers to scent (which are actually in short supply in natural areas this time of year), I branched out into other smells. Occasionally on my route there is the unpleasant odor from pet droppings left instead of picked up by their owners. There is also the frequent smell that is hard to explain but is that general miasma of plant matter as it decays along waterways. I came upon a freshly mowed grassy area in a park that wafted the cut grass scents. I started to behave much like Sissel Tolaas, sticking my nose up against all sorts of things. And I collected the few plants Idisplayed in the photo above (a pressing in progress - it's not quite dry yet) and to experiment with in the vaporization method.
I wish I'd actually prepped the paper with colors and writing before pressing, but I did not. So I'll have to wait until the plants are completely dry to provide some more "flair" to the paper. The vaporization was interesting. And I'm intrigued by all the extra resources related to the chemical capturing and reproduction of scents.
Hi Meghan, thank you for this piece! The vaporization method looks like so much fun, I hope I can do it sometime while it's still warm enough to take walks. I also came across those "hard to explain" smells where you don't know where it exactly comes from though am happy that you had the chance to investigate and find smells!
ReplyDeletePressed paper plants are beautiful and there's so many ways to compose them on a page. Do the plants still have a scent after you pressed them?
I'm excited to see what "flair" you bring to the page. Thank you for sharing!
Meghan!!!...What a beautiful piece you created with scent as your inspiration...it must be pretty neat to encounter the smells of rosemary, blackberries etc., on your walk...even though I walk in a wooded park, there aren't any similar smells to yours that I ever noticed...It's really really cool that you completed the smell vaporization process too...the idea of recreating smells reminds me of the movie HAROLD & MAUDE when Maude shared some sort of device that you could smells sounds that have been bottled up...all in all, your exercises for this week are definitely creative
ReplyDeleteHey Meghan, I love that you used the vaporization method, too. I imagine the edible nature of the plants you found makes the scent stronger to we humans? I appreciate how you recognized before your walk that some plants don't smell appealing to work with at all, that connects in with the cognitive side of smell and that is such a nice connection between mental intention for a meditative walk and collecting scent outdoors. Nice insight. I wonder if you could go further with that and chart those intentions/ideas? I love this piece and the beautiful result. Thank you!
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