The artist Donna Lipowitz says she had the thought for her scent library whereas within the forest subsequent to her home. “It’s sort of loopy, however I simply get concepts on a regular basis,” the Australia-born multisensory artist mentioned one afternoon at her residence in West Seattle, handmade curtains shading her huge assortment of fragrance bottles towards the solar. “I genuinely thought: wouldn’t or not it’s cool for those who may borrow scents like books? And would that work? Would folks do it? Would they simply suppose it was silly?”
Thus far, nobody appears to suppose it’s silly. Lipowitz debuted the primary incarnation of her Scent Lending Library in a transformed provide closet in New York in April 2025, on the Olfactory Artwork Keller in Chinatown, drawing a crowd and a line regardless of wet climate. In November 2025, the exhibition opened within the entrance home windows of Fogue Gallery in Seattle’s Georgetown neighbourhood. It has been so well-liked there that in April, it would transfer upstairs right into a everlasting set up house.
What’s within the library? Chanel No. 5, but in addition Bermuda Triangle. Bounce model “Outside Contemporary” dryer sheets. Eau Sauvage, created in 1966 by the perfumer Edmond Roudnitska as a masculine scent for Dior. Important oils like frankincense and eucalyptus. The scent of house (developed in 2008 by the chemist Steve Pearce for the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration to assist practice astronauts) and of Cheerios (that includes precise cereal).
Some gadgets are idea scents that Lipowitz herself created, just like the aforementioned Bermuda Triangle and It’ll Be OK, blended in 2020 utilizing aromas typically regarded as uplifting. Her Inexperienced Cicada was created for Olfactory Artwork Keller’s 2022 Portraits in Scent present and is supposed as a self-portrait of the artist, age 5, barefoot within the Australian rainforest.
Fittingly, Teen Spirit deodorant is among the many bottled scents on the Scent Lending Library in Seattle Picture: Bess Lovejoy
There are two components to the library: a reference part (greater than 140 scents) and a lending part (84 scents and counting). The scents are available small amber bottles with only a hint of perfume on cotton or blotter paper—sufficient to scent, to not put on—and every borrowed scent consists of an old school check-out slip stamped with its return date. (One bottle, labelled “Nothing”, is solely empty.)
A part of the thought behind the library, Lipowitz says, is growing our scent literacy—coaching our noses as we practice our muscle groups, brains or style buds. However it’s not a lot about having the ability to detect particular odours, bloodhound-like, as it’s growing a capability to note and admire scent in a world dominated by sight and sound. Lipowitz says one customer to the library, a boy about seven years previous, smelled a package deal of tennis balls close to the scent vials (there are choose scent props round) and mentioned, astonished: “So does the whole lot have a scent?” She may virtually see the gears turning and the home windows opening in his thoughts.
Lipowitz additionally appreciates how the scent library has functioned (each in New York and Seattle) as a 3rd house. Individuals convey associates or make new ones there, and generally they’ve emotional experiences introduced on by scent’s potential to conjure recollections. One lady, who smelled the entire library, mentioned she had each laughed and cried whereas doing so. “It’s like a miniseries,” Lipowitz says. A Scottish man who smelled Dwelling Storage—a scent Lipowitz created with help from Fogue’s proprietor Kerry Gates—was additionally dropped at tears, having made contact with the ghosts of woodworking initiatives previous.
Scent reminiscence
For my very own library expertise, I borrowed two gadgets, Clearwood and Iso E Tremendous. Each are perfumery molecules: constructing blocks of scent which can be typically artificial. Clearwood jogged my memory of patchouli, and Lipowitz mentioned it had been synthesised in a Swiss lab to seize the extra interesting points of patchouli whereas avoiding the funkier components that flip some folks off. Iso E Tremendous, in the meantime, is among the most well-known perfumery molecules and was created by Worldwide Flavors & Fragrances in 1973. I used to be fascinated by its potential to scent just like the entirety of a males’s cologne in only one molecule.
I requested Lipowitz learn how to get to know my new scents, and she or he suggested me to scent them at totally different occasions of day whereas taking notes. As I did so, I used to be shocked at how the aromas modified. I had all the time discovered the interplay of pores and skin and scent attention-grabbing, however this confirmed me how mercurial scent may very well be even when pores and skin is taken out of the equation.
Typically, Iso E Tremendous smelled magnetic and scrumptious; generally, it smelled solely like a person who wished to scent costly (and thus it smelled sort of low cost). To start with, I discovered Clearwood nicer to scent, though I missed the earthier undertow of actual patchouli, or imagined I did. Noon, on a chilly and cloudy Monday, Clearwood opened up into heat, whereas at different occasions it appeared sharper and extra chemical. Lipowitz instructed me that our sense of scent works finest within the morning, and whereas my very own idea of “morning” is erratic, each scents smelled finest to me round 1:30am—fuller, extra nice, much less hole than earlier within the day.
The artist Donna Lipowitz at residence Picture: Bess Lovejoy
After visiting each the library and Lipowitz’s residence, I requested the artist what makes scent artwork. She talked about a e-book she had been studying by the thinker Larry Shiner, Artwork Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Scent and the Olfactory Arts (2020), which describes how olfactory artwork deliberately makes use of odours to create aesthetic experiences. However in contrast to fragrances offered in a retailer, these needn’t be nice. As a substitute, they’re meant, in line with Lipowitz, to “problem our perceptions, specific advanced ideas and interact the viewers each bodily and intellectually”.
It’s straightforward to consider scent, at the least in US tradition, largely as one thing to keep away from (take into account the unfavourable connotation of the phrase “smelly”) or as one thing colonised by luxurious manufacturers. However the expertise needn’t be confined to these two extremes. As I believed in regards to the library’s enchantment, I thought of how this cultural neglect additionally means there may be room left for the adventurous to play and create refined manoeuvres. The ephemerality of scent, its unpredictability (as my very own borrowings confirmed me), can really feel thrilling. It additionally appears like a method of reinforcing the embodied human, of carving out house for deeply non-public and subjective worlds—ones that we then do our greatest to attempt to focus on and share, whether or not the immediate is the scent of house, Cheerios or strolling across the Australian rainforest at age 5.
“Actually, it’s been fairly overwhelming how well-liked the library has been. It appears like most people wants this,” Lipowitz says. As soon as the library has moved upstairs at Fogue, she hopes to develop into collaborative occasions with different artists, and maybe ultimately into different cities. “I get excited when folks are available who aren’t perfumers,” she says. “Or who aren’t scent folks. I need everybody to have the ability to have a go.”
Donna Lipowitz: Scent Lending Library, Fogue Studios and Gallery, Seattle
