Portals Q&A
The three contributors to Portals, the latest limited edition from Ex Libris Odoratis, answer questions about perfume and creative process in this ongoing blog post.
Is there a perfume in your collection that holds deep personal significance? How does it influence your creative work?
Kashina:
Borneo 1834 by Serge Lutens
first exposure to the camphorous, medicinal, non-serene in scent, wrapped up in cacao-patchouli truffle, is it edible or not do I spit it out or not . . . The lesson is the writing follows where the scent goes whether giddy solemn bodily shadowed playfull silly dissonant . . . elasticity receptivity immediacy are key. Whatever comes out comes out – there is always tomorrow, replenishing, growth, exploration-play.
Elizabeth:
Chiara 41 by i Profumi di Firenze represents to me an awakening to deeper intimacy and attunement, a nostalgic scent to me now, it came into my life in the midst of the pandemic and represented to me the need we have to belong to one another. Red Musc by Mad et Len makes me feel at home, warm, ties back to a strong and content sense of self. Ceramic by Andrea Maack I wear often with reverence, feels cold and fresh, frost and new leaves.
Noele:
It Must Be The Weather by Sissel Tolaas showed me how olfactory art,
like painting, can encompass moods, feelings, and weather often too difficult or fleeting to describe in words. It painted a picture of a place
I had never been but knew deeply. The feeling of looking out a window at
the sea on a stormy day, but safe inside. It mirrored so much of my own childhood, a place I often return to
for inspiration in my work.
Painter Elizabeth Doering and writer/designer Noele Lusano, West Seattle, summer 2024.
An early response to Maison Shehu’s Huit Étoiles by Noele Lusano, Vashon Island, summer 2023. © Noele Lusano
Where did your love of perfume begin?
Kashina:
Féminité du Bois was put in my bottle Volupté laced my bébé formula chewing pacifiers soaked in Malibu Musk no not true but when you dig for records in certain places you see other junks . . . yellowing magazines, toys, stained clothes, dusty perfumes . . . all can be cheap and easy to accumulate . . . so hoarding starts . . . vehicles to otherworlds
Elizabeth:
Around 11, my older sister moved home for a summer before she moved to Albuquerque, she was never home though, and I would sometimes open the door to the bedroom where she was staying, scent hit first and I was in full idol worship mode, I'd look at her clothes, shoes, everything, fragrant and fascinating, 4711 cologne was on her shelf at the time, but her things didn't smell like that - it was something else a mixture of camphor, bitter melon, gardenia, rubber cement, and just herness. I loved whatever that was, a cloud she could leave behind, that was all Debi, even when she was not there.
Can you describe your sense of possibility or limitation, responding to these scents through paint/text?
Kashina:
There’s all possibilities and no limitations, you can reach anything dreams sounds textures other waters . . . you can float anywhere
Elizabeth:
I can think more easily of the possibilities the scent prompts created, focus on a fragrance took me to paint more from a felt intuitive place, the wearing and immersion in a perfume its own ritual cloud, like an incense that lifted my body into focus, into the work. Limitations that would come up, if a scent felt foreign, it would take longer for me to understand it, several days to walk around in it before I could respond. For me there is always massive inertia before creation, the fear of being seen, judged, fear also that I would hurt another, that if I did show myself, my art, and win praise, that somehow creating and enjoying it, would make another feel less than.
From Elizabeth Doering’s studio. © Elizabeth Doering
In your practice, how does collecting perfume mirror the process of collecting words and experiences?
Noele:
Collecting fragrances is like collecting dreams, images, fragments of place. Certain perfumes in my collection become places I can go to in my mind, which is true for certain resonant words as well - I keep a long list of these words I like on a website called wordnik.com. I imagine most writers have lists and lists of words. Sometimes a scent can even become a distinct mental ‘place’ after smelling it once - it makes an intense impact - it’s a fully fleshed-out vision. Which was true for my experience of British artist/sculptor Richard Wilson’s installation 20:50, an artwork which wasn’t intended to be overtly olfactory, but, being a room filled with engine oil, had a distinct olfactory presence. Later, responding to Comme des Garçons Tar in Portals, I couldn’t help but think of 20:50 and this smell. It’s always fun when stimuli play on memory and imagination, mix and meld, and create new memories which become part of the overall experience when revisited in the future. I hope to see 20:50 again - it’ll no doubt remind me of Tar and the poem I wrote in response to it.
Kashina:
I love reading dictionaries for fun encyclopedias of food record discographies anything to cram information into my head, hermitte-crab shelliness equals a richer world more places to home-hone in on jump on the luggage to make it close pow pow but the sweaters and souvenir snowglobes keep overspilling the unzippable valise.