AVIEL FOLLETT

Circling.mp4

Aromatic Avatar

The chain of office is a burden and a privilege. I am burdened and privileged to be openly, visibly queer. I wanted to display this, to make something luxorious but handmade. It's only recently that queerness left back alleys and dark corners. Even more so that we would wear our colors everyday. I am so grateful for those who come before me. I am often also the first trans person someone has really met. I am the visible one, the one they ask all the questions. I've accepted that responsibility. I wear the chain of office and I stand regal in my cape.

The scent is on the lava beads and ribbon itself, an earthy green scent with a healthy amount of dirt to it, history and grass roots so to speak. The rainbow piece smells of lavender.

Citrus

Thinking of traditional garlands and lucky oranges, of the handycrafts of the Victorian era and all the bits and bobs I seem to collect.

Scent is orange, dried but the string had been coated with orange zest as well.

Magic of Music - Green Process

Art is process. Perfume takes making. And comparing.

I recorded the sound of my own humming and ambient noises and then played with the reverb. It is ethereal, or at least mildly out of place. The process of making is entrancing. I embroider and do, do, do. One stich after another. Here you can see that happening.

The darker green messy circle has my own green, earthy and culinary almost with sage, moss, olive oil, dirt, and about a hundred other bits and bobs added to it. The lighter and larger neat circle is scented with the fabricated greens provided in our scent kits.

Mask - Protection

I knew imediately I wanted to make something woven and decided to add the fringe later. It reflects shamanistic masks, as was noted in class, but truly I had wanted something that felt handmade and looked interesting. All the connections that could be made were.

Scented with cloves, lavender, and chamomile (which would become my favorite combination)

(Was parred with a sachet of the same mix of dried herbs which is now attached to my purse)

When you cannot touch the trees

or the grass that grows beneath,

when the forest's love is distant

by time and place,

when the morning is devoid

of singing birds,

when even your first breaths

are measured,

then you will worship again

the old gods, the forgotten ones,

the things long buried under concrete,

and sad as I am to say

you will not touch them either.

It is only too late we reach for hope.

Out of the Box

The idea is that there will be a time in the future when we can no longer interact with nature how we do today, and the spiritualist practices of the past will be fabricated, false. The grass is not there, the flowers are dried and long dead. You cannot safely burn a fire or light incense. You can only worship the idols when you have ruined the gods.

(This is not a collective statement, and I don't think we really named it, but it was the ideas being thrown around. Anyway, have a poem I wrote about it too.)

Scent is of paper and various dried flowers, fragrant but contained to the prism.

Utopian Body - Clothes Maketh the Man

Copy of ClothesMakethTheMan.mp4

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." - Mark Twain

The body is literal, made of parts and pieces, but is also figurative as it is made of symbols and meanings. How we dress is how we display ourselves in the world. On the clothes line are welding gloves, comfortable shirts, soft sweaters, fanciful ties. It is how we communicate to other people who we are.

The three people holding the line were also holding various burning scents-- sage, palo santo, and a rose incense. Meant to evoke the sense of ritual and otherworldliness as described by Foucault.

Magic Potion

As being both an art piece and something practical, this magic potion is edible and might even help those of us who struggle with nausea. In keeping with the look of old artefacts I created a paper box, referencing back to how doctors would prescribe and give out medicines that they would make themself. It also has post apocalyptical vibes though, which is intentional. I eat ginger because my medicine makes it impossible for me to have any pharmaceutical anti-nausea medicines. In the mess of all the complicated chemical processes we have to find new (old) ways to fix the problems.

The scent is strongly ginger, as the candy's ingredients are ginger, sugar, and a small amount of vanilla extract.

Altar - Sharing Shabbat

This piece is half performance. The altar is set, the cloth decorated in bright colors and a pattern inspired by that of the Leningrad Codex, with common symbols, the lion, a temple menorah, a Hanukkah menorah, four cups (for the four-world kingdoms).

Then resting upon that is a silver tray holding a plain glass and a loaf of fresh bread. It is not a kiddish cup in that I will not butcher Hebrew over it in a false ceremony, but it fills the space for one. In that same regard, like much else of this project, the bread is not proper challat, nor is it's cover adorned as most Challah covers are. It's a honey loaf, a recipe my mother taught me. I don't have wine, for practical reasons mostly, but instead made tea to share. The bread too, does not stay whole and pretty, but is sliced and shared. There are peach preserves to eat it with if you wish.

Elsewise resting on the cloth are three glass dishes, as there might be three vessels for the altar of burnt offering, the altar of incense, and the Ark. I have no Ark, and I will not burn an offering, but I can burn some incense and place dried flowers. In place of the Ark I have a candle marked with Shin, for El Shaddai (translated usually as "God Almighty"). This symbol usually adorns items that carry Torah verses.

The performance is in the sharing, is in breaking bread and sharing drink. I may share a bit of philosophy, but primarily it is about community, the building and the sharing. With classes and work on Fridays I can't keep the Shabbat, but here I can share some aspects of it as I'm learning to make peace with my faith, history, and ongoing experience of community.

Yellow Pattern, Aviel Follett 2021

Poetry of Longing

I miss the sun. She comes so briefly, and I'm usually not able to do much in her rays. I'm busy, and it's cold, and most days she hides behind grey clouds that turn the world dull and blinding. I miss the summer for the first time in my life. I never missed the summer before, I mean it. The spring sometimes, the autumn more so, and winter even. But the summer feels like something in me is dead and rotting in a few inches of water.

But I miss the sun, the warmth of her gaze, and the safety of a sunny afternoon. Maybe it's childhood nostalgia. Maybe it's my terrible vitamin D deficiency.

Scent is an oddly spicy chemical scent from vitamin D supplements suspended in alcohol.

Sanctuary - Nostalgia

To the right is my original sketch, but the limitations of time, budget, and creeping realities of memory saw it change drastically.

Memory is constructed and reconstructed again and again. That's why the details change in the different recollections. The pathways your brain take define themselves again and again, in the act of recreation.

And in this way we make up memories from bits and pieces of truth.

I think of this sanctuary as being so great, but it was just a summer. It wasn't even the full summer. I couldn't have spent as much time as I seem to remember, and visiting the place where the dead upper half of the tree slowly decomposes I face that it can't have been as beautiful as I want to remember it as.

One brief and beautiful summer of my childhood my sister and I found the ultimate sanctuary from the brutal wet heat of Georgia's humid afternoons. A tree had fallen across the creek we played in, creating a bridge across, but then also it was not dead. In the brilliance of nature a horizontal tree isn't all that different then a vertical one. So it was out sanctuary, a vibrant place alive and gorgeous and ephemeral. It lasted only the summer, as the city cut the tree from it's roots so the creek would remain unobstructed it.

I wanted to recreate some of that feeling, bittersweet nostalgia and wonder. I took inspiration too from our class visit to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and from the delicate safety of a bee on the pollen covered petal of a magnolia bloom.

(Above: a detail photo of a leaf.

Right: A photo of the frame when I finished working the first day)

I do mean struggled. Whoever had had the PVC before bc had glued them in place and while most could be pulled apart they would still have one attachment stuck. I had to adapt my idea entirely, but I began to like the idea of an irelgualar shape, a space that is not delineated as one but rather can be walked into.

(Below: a selfie of me working by string light.)

So I shifted focus to the idea of constructing memory. We were asked to use as much found material as possible. I had bought the paper I used, but for a different class, and the string lights I had hoped to use for my dorm but they're not so high quality as started to die after just a few hours of use.

But otherwise I used things I had or found. I got PVC pipe from the Give/Take on campus. I had the silver wrapping paper for gifts. I had bought the metal tape on accident in the past and just not gotten rid of it.

So, I struggled with the tools I had and argued them into some sort of shape. Memory not idealized, but rather confronting reality.

Eventually I did get something together. Here is is in harsh light to the left, and below in the near darkness it is intended to be experienced in.

The paper has been painted with scent and some diluted water colors. If I did this again I would add more color. The scent is that of my own green mix, again earthy and dirty, an herbal tea which had been allowed to begin to ferment, and the lavender/clove/chamomile mix I've come to love. Right before sharing I also burned some sage around it, letting some of the ash get on the paper and allowing the area around the piece to smell smoky while the piece itself had much more of the natural scent.

Thank you to Maralina for modeling.

Details of the paper.

The metal appearance of the frame made it even more fabricated, and helped build the notion of man made, while holding such natural scents. It confused the senses, much like a memory half recalled.

Finally, thank you.

This semester has been an incredible learning experience and a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stressful time. Have a good winter break, and a lovely new year.

Here's what's become of my projects, by the way. There's a corner for them in my dorm.

Page updated

Report abuse