GATEWAYS TO AWARENESS

Gateways to Awareness explores the role of memory, perception and the five senses in our appreciation of art and the world around us. The artworks included in the exhibition engage the viewer in multi-sensory experiences across a variety of genres and media including disability, floral, olfactory, and sound art(s). This year-end show is a veritable tasting menu of the experimental and experiential forms of art the Museum is scheduled to present over the next two years.

M Dougherty

Artist Bio

M Dougherty

M Dougherty (b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA) is a nonbinary, multidisciplinary artist and researcher splitting their time between Philadelphia and New York. Known for their innovative use of scent to explore the intersection of technology, humanity, and the natural world, M’s work is grounded in scientific research but is also deeply personal and introspective.

Through installations, performances, and creative technologies, M creates experiences that immerse audiences in new olfactory worlds. In their /Forest Bath installation, for example, they brought the smell of the forest to the streets of New York City during the height of the pandemic, inviting visitors to breathe in the health-benefitting scents of phytoncides and woodland materials.

Somatic Atlas, another notable work, is an aroma reference kit that invites viewers to explore the diverse and fascinating scents of the human body. With 28 scents, the kit provides a hands-on and immersive way to study and learn about the nuanced scentscapes of our bodies.

Dougherty's work is, by design, deeply thoughtful, informative and accessible. M is committed to furthering education and access to olfactory information and creation. They run workshops and give guest lectures at universities around the world. They are also on the board of directors of OSMOCOSM, a global conference on machine olfaction based at MIT in Boston.

Dougherty's work has been exhibited at museums and galleries globally, including the Olfactory Art Keller in New York City, and the François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles.Their work is a testament to the power of scent to connect us to our surroundings, our memories, and each other.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

The Odor Organ is a compact device that allows individuals to play scents instead of sounds, inspired by the longstanding parallel between scent and sound, and the form of a piano. As a society, we favor sight and often ignore this rich olfactory information. Although not everyone is, humans evolved to be capable of perceiving and communicating this information. Being able to have a more acute understanding of smell will allot us a more clear understanding of our surroundings, our environment, our bodies, our health, our memory formation and recall. Scent can tell you about the genetics of those around you, the species in your local ecosystem, about disease and danger; it holds the traditions and foods of a culture. Scent is a wonderful well of information, but as a medium involving chemistry, artistry, neuroscience, perception, physiology, genetics, biology it can be a pretty intimidating field to approach.

M Dougherty is committed to use art to heighten audience’s olfactory literacy (the ability to perceive, understand, and communicate scent information to a quantifiable and trainable degree). Play provides such a fun, joyful, low friction access point into learning, specifically with complex ideas like olfaction. M harnesses this to empower others to follow their own curiosity into the world of scent .

There is a longstanding parallel between scent and sound; it is present in the temporal quality, in the subjective nature, and even in the language used to describe scent. Some common terms in scent practice: notes, accords, harmonies, perfumer’s organ. In the history of scent art, there have been a few attempts at equating musical notes to scent notes. Most famously, Septimus Piesse took the musical scale and mapped scents to each note of a piano. In 1922, artist Frank R. Paul, inspired by Piesse’s work, illustrated a theoretical "smell organ," a device which could play the scented scales but it was never actually fabricated. It did inspire other artists, and since then, there have been a few iterations of this concept, including this one.
Dougherty Odor Organ 3

M Dougherty
Odor Organ, 2023
Airpump, tabletop device, odor materials
20" x 20" x 36"

Lindsey Dunnagan

Artist Bio

Lindsey Dunnagan

Lindsey Dunnagan uses diverse techniques to explore human interaction with the natural environment. Her artwork connects humanity to nature in small ways and large. At the intimate level, she tells stories of home and identity. On a larger scale, she considers our spiritual ties to nature. Her work is an investigation of micro and macro personal connections and a reminder of the space we traverse. Lindsey is a three-time Hunting Art Prize Finalist and has shown nationally in solo and juried exhibitions. Her work was published in the 120 West edition of New American Paintings.

Lindsey was born in Anchorage, Alaska and eventually moved to Texas where she earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design in Architecture from Texas A&M in 2007. After college, she worked as an architectural intern before deciding to join the US Peace Corps. From 2007 – 2009, Lindsey worked with artisans as a Small Business Development Volunteer in Morocco. In 2014 Lindsey completed a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing and in 2015 she finished a Master of Arts in Art History from Texas Woman’s University. Lindsey is an Associate Professor of Art and runs the painting department at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Snow piled up so high in our backyard that it buried our fence. That’s when my brother and I started digging. We dug until we found the ground again—old grass long dead from the cold. Then we started building tunnels. Like ants, my brother and I shaped a new, unseen landscape under the crusty top layer of snow. In the summer, the ground was solid and unchanging, but in the Alaskan winter, it was easy to manipulate the terrain with just our bodies. Snow turned the environment into a vast expanse of playful possibilities. When looking back at my childhood of growing up in Alaska, I am struck by the magic in the landscape and how I was immersed in creation every time I bundled up to go outside. In Catching Shadows, this magic is captured through a fiber installation and two-dimensional artworks that abstractly layer Alaskan imagery, recalling the feeling of that space. The fiber installation, Land Enveloped, features hanging fabric walls that offer various paths, allowing for a sense of discovery as they can be manipulated to choose a new direction. The mixed media paper artworks deconstruct watercolor paintings, distorting perception and echoing the flawed nature of memory. This act of creating and destroying a painting in order to make something new allows space for pure play; it is a kind of call and response that is reminiscent of childhood games. The process of making this work parallels my glance back at childhood and its inseparable connection to the Alaskan landscape. By manipulating shapes from the place I love, the series evokes a panglossian nostalgia and invites the viewer to play.
Dunnagan Land Enveloped

Lindsey Dunnagan
Land Enveloped, 2022-2023
Hand dyed cotton & silk organza

Dunnagan Echo Outline

Lindsey Dunnagan
Echo, 2020
Watercolor, graphite, and silver leaf on paper
10" x 14"

Dunnagan Sun Shimmer Outline

Lindsey Dunnagan
Sun Shimmer, 2020
Watercolor and silver leaf on paper
10" x 14"

Dunnagan Gliding Mountains Outline

Lindsey Dunnagan
Gliding Mountains, 2020
Watercolor, graphite, and silver leaf on paper
10" x 14"

Dunnagan Bubbling Up Outlined

Lindsey Dunnagan
Bubbling Up, 2021
Watercolor, graphite, and silver leaf on paper
5" x 5"

Dunnagan Catch Me

Lindsey Dunnagan
Catch Me, 2021
Watercolor, graphite, and silver leaf on paper
5" x 5"

Dunnagan Near Misses

Lindsey Dunnagan
Near Misses, 2021
Watercolor, graphite, and silver
Two at 5" x 5"

Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Artist Bio

Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Artist, writer, and educator Brian Goeltzenleuchter was born in San Diego in 1976. Through an artistic practice that uses digital and analog technologies to mediate the senses of sight, sound, touch, and smell, Goeltzenleuchter designs situations which explore the use-value of culture and the role of cultural institutions in the shaping of the social sphere. His current artwork considers the way in which personal and cultural narratives can be expressed through the sense of smell. He creates maps—not for way-finding, but for place-making—as a means of locating the “self” and the “other” in the city. Goeltzenleuchter’s socially engaged art has been critically celebrated for expanding the olfactory potential for contemporary art. He earned his MFA at UC San Diego. He is Faculty Fellow in the Weber Honors College and Research Fellow at the Institute for Public and Urban Affairs, San Diego State University.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Scents of Exile is an ongoing art project started in 2019 that bears witness to the immigrant experience, one person at a time. For Scents of Exile, artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter interviews refugees and other immigrants about their scent memories of home. Odors, which are ephemeral and fleeting, have a strong connection to place and often elicit vivid and emotional memories—a phenomenon known as the “Proust effect.” Goeltzenleuchter uses the interviews as inspiration to create fragrances using cosmetic-grade materials. These fragrances are then embedded in hand sanitizer. Each Scents of Exile station consists of a freestanding hand sanitizer dispenser filled with scented sanitizer and a printed display summarizing the interviewee’s story and scent memories.

Goeltzenleuchter intends for the Scents of Exile stations to be installed at cultural institutions for use by the public on a day-to-day basis. As such, the artworks function as dispersed counter-monuments that expand our individual and collective self understanding by raising awareness of the diversity of immigrant experiences. When a visitor sanitizes their hands, the fragrance is transferred to the visitor who will carry it with them after leaving the institution, thereby taking the scent memory with them and becoming part of the artwork in a performative act.
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, PAULA, 41, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, MARIA, 43, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, QASIM, 36, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, PEDRAM, 48, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, ABENA, N/A, 2019
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Derek Hoffend

Artist Bio

Derek Hoffend

Derek Hoffend is a visual and audio artist who creates interactive sound-sculpture installations and electronic music, exploring sound as a medium intersecting with physical forms, structures, bodies, and spaces to create immersive and participatory experiences for viewers. Fusing elements of sonic, electronic, digital, and physical media, his work combines acoustic, recorded, and generative audio processes with objects and environments, and emphasizes relationships between sensory phenomena and perception.

Ongoing themes of interest include explorations in immersive audio, multi-channel arrangements, geometric architectural forms, tactile interfaces, vibro-acoustics, viewer participation, resonant objects, and amplified spaces. Recent work additionally explores an interest in biometric sensing, and therapeutic potentials of audio frequencies, rhythmic entrainment, and colored light. Hoffend also maintains an active music practice, recording and performing electronic music under the moniker Aether Chroma as well as his own name.

Recent shows include performances at Mayday (Providence, RI), the New England Synthesizer Festival (Burlington, MA), and Modular on the Spot (Somerville, MA), and installations at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), Boston Cyberarts (Boston, MA), and The Sprinkler Factory (Worcester, MA). Aether Chroma music is released on Bandcamp.com.

Derek holds an MFA in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004), an MA in Studio Art from New York University (2001), and a BFA dual-major in Sculpture and Photography from the State University of New York at Fredonia (1997). He is currently Director and Professor of the Game Design & Immersive Technologies program at Lesley University (Cambridge, MA), and Adjunct Faculty in Animation the Massachusetts College of Art & Design (Boston, MA).

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

My artwork is characterized by installations that combine sculptural forms with sound and interactive experiences. Pieces explore the intersection of sound as a medium with sculptural forms and structures, as well as light, sites, spaces, and the human body to create immersive and participatory experiences for viewers, employing sonic, electronic, and physical media. Works are often interactive and invite participation through touch or motion, exploring cause-and-effect relationships of viewer action within reactive systems, as well as personal and social dynamics found in play and collaboration.

Recent work explores an interest in facilitating somatosensory responses, therapeutic experiences, and shifts in consciousness via direct viewer participation. I am particularly interested in works that create a space where scientific and metaphysical ideas can cohabitate, creating a bridge between the physical and supernatural, and inviting the potential for interplay between sensory and spiritual experiences.

To this end, I am inspired by and employ a variety of processes and theories in my work such as vibro-acoustics for haptic experience, entrainment theory (rhythmic, biomusical, and neural), acoustic phenomena such as monaural and binaural beating, and components of sound therapy, sacred-geometry, and color therapy. Biofeedback principles and techniques are also employed such as using heart-rate monitors to trigger external events in the form of sound and light feedback.
Hoffend 08_SonotronMobius_FrontColors_Edit2_FULL_72ppi

Derek Hoffend
Sonotron, 2013
Steel, Sound, Speakers, Wood, Fabric, RGB LED Spotlights, Computer, Software and Amplification Gear
11’ x 9’ x 10’

02_Portal_Front_Ling_12x9_1100ppi

Derek Hoffend
Portal, 2014
Polyester Drafting Film, RGB LED Strips, Sound, Speakers, Microcontrollers, Audio Equipment
7’ x 9’ x 4 ½’

Molly Joyce

Artist Bio

Molly Joyce

Molly Joyce has been deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source, and her most recent album, Perspective, featuring voices and viewpoints of disabled interviewees, was praised by Pitchfork as "a powerful work of love and empathy that underscores the poison of ableism in American culture. For more information: www.mollyjoyce.com
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

My work is concerned with disability as a creative source. I have an impaired left hand due to a previous car accident, and since the accident I have journeyed from denying to embracing my disability. This progression has largely paralleled the expansion of my artistic practice, from one focus music composition to involving performance, video, community engagement, collaboration, research, and pedagogy. Through this multifaceted approach, I hope to shift disability from a fixed, static imperfection to a fluid, creative potential.
Joyce Perspective by Colin Conces

Molly Joyce
Perspective, 2020-present
Video/audio
18'

Marissa Chappell Massucco

Artist Bio

Marissa Massucco

Marissa Chappell Massucco, lifelong coastal Massachusetts resident has grown into her art organically. She has had a varied career and education in retail marketing, veterinary technology, and now, retail shopkeeping. A dedicated gardener since adolescence and currently a hobby perennial garden designer, she has developed a style for using her plants in a variety of ways. Her pieces emphasize natural order and are not over-structured or over-arranged. She enjoys blending flora and fauna, moss and organic materials, constantly integrating manmade hardscapes and other mediums to create a sense of botanical awareness. Her works range from actual landscapes and household displays to diverse, often intricate terrariums, to retail displays and novel works like plant chairs.

The purpose of her pieces and intention derive from vegetation through their juxtaposition, be it against the glass of her terrariums, along the wooden frames of her chairs, or covering the floors, walls and ceilings of her New Bedford retail space. These works may remind us of our place in the natural order and of our rooted friends' most basic and inspiring ability to create, grow and adapt simply with, in varying degrees and amounts, light, soil, water and the air we breathe.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

I have always been inspired by nature and look for ways to express my love for it through art. As a botany enthusiast I like to search for interesting places to put my plants. I found an old armchair with a tear in the upholstered seat and thought it would be an amazing planter. Visiting the desert for the first time a few years ago, I fell in love with cacti and succulent plants. They are the most resilient and adaptable plants that I have ever worked with. I created layers of moss, added woodland branches and air plants to give the chair a magical and calming effect.
Marissa M Living Chair 2

Marissa Chappell Massucco
The Living Chair, 2023
Wooden chair, moss, various succulents
45" x 22" x 25"

Bella Meyer

Artist Bio

Bella Meyer

Born in Paris and raised in Switzerland, Bella Meyer was born immersed in the world of art. She always painted while studying art history and obtaining her Ph.D in medieval art history from the Sorbonne. Bella taught art history, wrote numerous academic papers and delivered informative, first hand experiences in lecture form, of her grandfather Marc Chagall’s work. Invited to take on responsibilities for the Visual Arts at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Bella settled in New York, where she held this position for a number of years. Adding to her expanding list of accomplishments, she has had her hand in costume design and mask-making for a number of theatre performances and also created many puppets for her own puppet show productions. Bella's passion for beauty and aesthetics, led her to become a floral designer. In a recent publication Bella describes her love for flowers, “to discover its essence—opening, life, death—is to experience an unimaginable mystery.” Bella founded FleursBELLA, a floral design and décor company, in 2005, focusing her talents on creating floral arrangements much in the way an artist paints.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

As I walk through the endless fields of tall reeds, cat tails and grasses, all so particular to our East Coast, I seem to hear faint songs of the past, melodies evoquing an immensely deep history of this soil, witness of so many lives……

The tall grasses, as they sway in the wind are the ones which also remind us of the endless waves in the ocean, the movements of the sails appearing and disappearing, sliding through the waves. Again they hold on to the mysteries of so many memories passing through or drowned in the depth of the sea.

Walking on this rich soil, meandering through the high grasses, I come upon birch trees. And then I remember how extraordinary an event it was for me when, long ago, visiting the North of Russia, near to what was then called Leningrad, I entered a birch tree forest, and for the first time ever felt a visceral belonging to these trees, as if my whole ancestry was linked to them.

This ancient memory stays with me, and that’s why I love the birches on our coast up north so very much.

Here they appear within the grasses, like a welcoming tree of ever growing memories.
Meyer Memories Sketch

Bella Meyer
Memories, 2023
Sketch of installation

Rachel Rosenkrantz

Artist Bio

Rachel Rosenkrantz

Rachel Rosenkrantz is a French luthier and designer based in Providence, who handcrafts unique stringed instruments, combining the traditional and the new, exploring and inventing techniques while bringing a unique perspective to a traditional idiom with a strong focus on sustainability and, in particular, biomaterials.

Born and raised in Montfermeil, France, Rosenkrantz studied design at Met de Penninghen (Academie Julian) where she was exposed to both fine art and applied art. Her understanding of construction through her industrial design years in the innovation departments of major companies as well as her knowledge of music are two strong assets forming a stable backbone to her current art-making of string instruments.

Rosenkrantz’s work has been included in Phaidon’s “The Shape of Sound” by Ultan Guilfoyle, and has been exhibited in Paris at Le Carrousel du Louvre at the “European ways of Life”. She has presented a gallery talk at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for “Play it Loud”, and has been featured in Anthony Bourdain’s “Raw Craft” as well as Autodesk’s “My Design Mind”.

When not at her workbench, Rachel teaches Spatial Design at the Experimental and Foundation Studies division at the Rhode Island School of Design, and does research at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Guitar Innovation Lab.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Creating music instruments in harmony with Nature through the use of biomaterials and biomimicry has been an integral part of my artistic practice for many years. However, the Pawtuxet project transcended the mere substitution of plastic with an organic substrate.

As a beekeeper, I have spent countless hours observing the remarkable behaviors of these industrious insects. Bees, with their innate ability to communicate through combs at a 309Hz frequency, have always captivated my imagination as that frequency is also found within the guitar range. Their harmonious society, built on intricate rhythms, offered a unique window into the world of sound and vibration. It was within this crossroads of my passion for beekeeping and my love for music that the Pawtuxet guitar project was born.

I began to discern the blueprints underlying the bees' combs and their behavior. This understanding allowed me to design a specific hive and guitar soundboard bracing that gently guided and encouraged my bees to create combs where I needed them for the instrument resonance, thus becoming co-creators in a harmonious partnership between nature and artistry.

The resulting combs, shaped by the bees' collective efforts, became an integral vital part of the instrument, diffusing organically the note, as an natural amplifier. Each note produced by this organic guitar resonated with the essence of the bees' hive, offering a harmonious reminder of the interconnected web of life, where their collective wisdom reverberates through our shared existence. The Pawtuxet guitar is an ode to profound connections within Nature.
Rosenkrantz Beehive Guitar

Rachel Rosenkrantz
309Hz, 2020
Honeycombs, cedar, spruce, bubinga, rosewood, mahogany, Nomex paper, bee's wax finish, and propolis