I love making things and wanted to try things that not just push my skills (too fun and easy honestly) but push ideas of what the handmade means. I often zone-out when making, or am thinking ahead to what needs to be done next. As a teacher, I am very focused on the students process. However, I wanted to experience process as the maker, to see what can be learned during the making process.
Part 1: Scent Lab at Mediamatic
Mediamatic is a place that explores the potential of interdisciplinary art, combining art, science, food (growing and serving), and issues of social justice. The location on the Dijkspark is one of my favorite Amsterdam nooks; a little spit of land that is off the many thoroughfares of Amsterdam but surprisingly near its center. They have an education program offering unusual classes highlighting the intersection of their focuses. Some of the current offerings are Design Your Own Shroud, Gentle Disco, and Freestyle Kintsugi. The course titles lead to questions in the best of ways! Ultimately I was pulled in by their Scent Lab. Mediamatic positions their Scent Lab in the context of art. With friends I attended the opening of the Scent Lab months before and was curious (see previous blog entry https://asafford4.wixsite.com/sdanded/post/space-1-mediamatic ).
In my own art I am interested in experiences more than objects, but the idea of using scent in my own art left me at a loss. Because I was stumped by how I might use something so ethereal and non-visual in an art context, I was drawn in. The equipment, materials, and processes seemed alchemical, in was tempting! I am a sucker for pretty tools.
The class was led by Frank Bloem, an artist who uses scent as a medium. Bloem means flower in Dutch, which just made the whole class more appealing. He sees perfume as a way to “touch upon wide variety of topics such as synaesthesia, language, behaviour, perfumery, story-telling, design, art (history) and smell”.
Bloem had just completed a project cataloging the known scents of the Noordzee (North Sea) for the Embassy of the Nordzee, an exciting group advocating for the Noordzee as a being that owns itself (link below)*. Bloem’s piece was situated on the beaches abutting the sea, where the audience was invited to sample the scents surrounded by the source.
Bloem gave us the background on how scents work, the sustainability and cruelty free sourcing of materials, and how to structure top, middle, and base notes. We sampled various scents to learn what to look (sniff) for.
For my raw material I brought orange peels, free leftovers from a juice stand. Outside there were several planters along Dijkspark full of various flowers and botanicals. Inside there was a wall full of commercial scent ingredients. We selected materials, sniffed, paired, and found combinations that appealed. We crushed, pulverized, mixed, distilled, and even microwaved the materials to pull the scent molecules from the raw materials.
First class: Mixing from pre-existing scents.
Distilling raw ingrediants into a simple olfactory experience felt like magic. It also felt like chemistry come to life, with potential in my Nest/innovation-space! The experience left me wanting to know more about olfactory senses, perfume history, the working of individual scents, and the chemistry of it all. I could see a scent lab being popular at CSW.
The making clearly led to more questions.
Second class: distilling your own scent
The final product, which smells like a gin and tonic due to combining citrus and juniper berries. Clearly some learning to do.
Part 2: Vegan Rugs at Texel Vilt
Years before, I had visited the magical island of Texel with my friend Erna, who spent her childhood there surrounded by sheep, the sea, and farming. Her father was a tulip farmer, and Erna tells me about growing up peeling the tulip's paper-like skins as part of the process. Currently, Erna is a wonderful sculptor and fiber artist who is now living and working in Amsterdam. Much of her art is about the history of Texel, and its lure as a place and culture (link below).
Tulip fields on the train to Den Helder
Erna had taken me and another friend to see her friend Rebecca, who is a felt (vilt in Dutch) artist in the town of Oudeschild on the island. When I considered new ways of making in my research, I knew I wanted to return to Rebecca’s studio.
Rebecca teaches workshops on how to make vegan sheepskin rugs. The sheep is sheared by a remarkably skilled shearer, who are able to shear the entire pelt of the sheep in one go. The pelt remains intact, as does the sheep. Rebecca has dozens of wool "pelts" hanging in the chilly outdoors, wrapped like cocoons.
We looked at the coloring of each pelt, picking one that appealed to us. I chose one that was light at the center, darkening as the color moved to the edges. It looked like coffee with milk poured into the center.
The vegan description is due to the unique process. What holds it together is having the back of the pelt felted, replacing the skin’s function in typical sheepskin rugs. The raw wool is washed repeatedly to remove the field (and other kinds of) dirt. The lanolin smell remains, which I love. It also made my hands soft for days. The lanolin smell is a connection to the sheep, and is an earthy, warm smell.
It was a day of rubbing, felting, and picking out bits of hay. There were a few breaks for tea, lunch, and at least one walk in the fields to see the sheep themselves. Texel sheep have the strangest baa. Their noses are quite square compared to the sheep I am familiar with, and I theorize that shape affects the sheep acoustics. I have no basis for this, but the sheep sound like old men complaining when they baa.
The road to the highest point on the island (so I was told, Netherlands is a flat place), little square heads, a fence sculpted from the earth and covered with grass, and a little herd.
After more rubbing, and a few spins in the felting machine, I had a finished rug I proudly carried with me on the return ferry from Texel. I still love unrolling the rug I made to feel the soft and warm wool. The neighborhood children love to flop on it as well, happy to know that the sheep at worst, was chilly for a while.
Here are some images from the process:
Thoughts from My Time at Mediamatic and Texel Vilt:
· How can we expand upon the combination of chemistry and art, as the hands-on processes made me want to know more of the science behind the processes? The making leads to the questions.
· There is an importance in seeing the source of the materials. It changes the way we see the world around us, and the potential ways we source materials, i.e. the orange peels, the sheared sheep pelt. The awareness of material sourcing ties into sustainability and the circular economy; this could be brought into the curriculum as a norm.
· The relevance of material origins seems tied into sustainability in a way beyond mere efficiency; it has a larger meaning than convenience.
· There should be a reconsideration of crafts deemed obsolete or dying. The skill in craft, shearing a sheep in one go, is not just remarkable but makes one reflect on the value of sheep’s life in the context of mass manufacturing. How can we look back to traditional skills and crafts to move forward in our thinking as a consuming culture? What traditional skills can used in new ways? In other words, is the most "efficient" in fact the best method?
· What is to be learned from the complete process, such as choosing the pelt, cleaning the wool, and the day long process of felting? There is a symbiosis of ideation with creation, again showing that materials can lead to ideas.
· Undertaking the whole process feels like an act of care. It reminded me of what Joanna Van Der Zaanden said about the act of repair: it shows a respect for the making process as well as the materials.
· Hand work can have ramifications beyond the labor.
And this is your reward for reading to the end: a cranky square-headed lamb.
Links
Mediamatic
Frank Bloem
*Embassy of the North Sea
“The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the principle that the North Sea owns itself.” It’s a wonderful idea that I suggest exploring further, with the legal and environmental implications.
Texel Vilt (Texel Felt)
Eran Van Sambeek
Blog Entry on When is the Hand a Better Teacher
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