Art in a Sense
Smells, sights, textures, tastes, and sounds shape spaces and experiences. Explore your surroundings and your senses further with me via Destination Journal (DJ for short) posts, sensory tours, walks, and workshops.
Want to learn more? Check out my links, email me at dinamackart@yahoo.com
or follow this link:
Yours in adventure,
Dina
Birthmarks and Bathing
I’m still working on “The Perpetual Bath” and setting a goal of 2024 to complete it in some form or fashion – book, series of small works, one installation?
Share this:
Post Hiatus Bathing
You can restart anything – it’s been two years since I’ve posted on my blog.
This January I started writing in the bathtub as a sensory source. I’ve created a few previous works using the bath as muse. On this “Fall back” morning, getting back to “The Perpetual Bath” – a working title. Writing on paper and then sharing snippets via typing on an ancient MacBook. Here’s the beginning line: “The original was baptismal.”
Share this:
Remnants and Reverence
This year, I’ve been using bits of watercolor dyed lace in a few new pieces and continue to work with gold leaf and pins. The lace was pulled from an earlier work exhibited back in 2003. The 2003 work was pulled from an earlier memory.
Share this:
Petal Pink Paper
Here’s what I love about the Queen Elizabeth rose as it begins to age: the texture feels paper thin, the pink remaining on the surface. I wouldn’t say that pink is a favorite color, but I love it in some roses, in the tiny Moleskin notebooks and the edges of a book with black or white covers, scarves from time-to-time, in Maira Kahlman’s illustrations, bakery boxes, sunsets, on the thorns and plant creases, thread, never (or at least not yet) as neon, stains of lipstick on white porcelain, and often when embroidered around edges surrounded by gold.
This month write a few sentences about a plant or a notebook in your Destination Journal.
Share this:
Destination Journal: An ode/oud to 2016
I love rituals and 2016 will probably bring more smells, sounds, and stems from years’ past. Looking forward to these and more surprises as well. An ode, and hopefully an oud (of the perfume variety but the stringed musical instrument would also be lovely). Here’s to the old, the new, the odd, and the ordinary this year…
Looking to explore quiet spaces for this year’s Destination Journal workshops and walks, perhaps within a few Monastatic-type environments. I want to track more smells in the field.
Working on upcoming exhibitions for this year – including a group show in March called Transference.
The Briefcase Library. Twenty-five books are currently checked out of the underground library. I’ll be working on more art inspired by books and of course loaning, selecting, and obsessing on their aesthetic, perhaps even designing a bookplate for the library.
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the studio, the swimming pool and bicycle, art museums and libraries, music, family, breakfast/lunch/dinner/last minute meetups with friends, a road trip or two. Cream of Wheat. More of all these in 2016.
The Sensory Times – last year’s 12 editions are complete. Will I revisit them?
Watercolors. And more of the usual: threads, pins, paper, plants, plexi…
The Dollhouse Timeshare. The Dollhouse Timeshare Homeowner’s Association was on a bit of a hiatus last year. Perhaps we will meet within the 2nd quarter of 2016.
Alien I4. Current construction on Florida’s Interstate 4 brings interesting visuals. Birds, water, cracked pipes, concrete, rust, machinery, mounds of dirt, plastic pieces in piles. Every so often I take a picture and post it on Instagram (dinamackdj) with the hashtag Alien I4. The look of I4 right now is otherworldly.
Artascope.
Happy New Year!
Share this:
A Destination Journal Student Stroll
A couple of weeks ago, I had the honor of leading students on a Sensory Tour for artist and professor Rachel Simmons’s art journals class. This is the second walk I’ve led this year for her students at Rollins College. A few had never walked the lake path behind the art building and none had participated in a walk focusing on the senses as a form of inspiration. We were fortunate to have an evening full of textures, sounds, smells, and a bunny sighting or two.
This month explore a new path in your neighborhood. What do you smell or hear? Jot down your impressions in your Destination Journal.
Share this:
Destination Journal: a note from the yard
I love being so close to the lily bed, a living extension of my studio space.
This month, reflect on the past season. What will you bring into the next season and what will you leave behind? Collect these thoughts in your Destination Journal,
Share this:
A recent Destination 
Journal took place in the home of an urban planner and master gardener. Some notes from the field: straight rows of fragrant, Florida native plantings; purple veins; a family history of rocks and fossils; plants and markings and making marks; a lesson on moss.
Today, take a few notes from your own backyard or background and jot them down in your Destination Journal.
Share this:
The Alleys of College Park
“The world is extremely asymmetrical and the things that rest on it are fairly level.” – a slice of Summer Rodman’s journal from the recent Destination Journal in College Park, Florida. (Image: Summer Rodman)
The group (5 total) took to the alleys behind a small stretch of businesses, focusing mainly on smelling and hearing. A giant leaf moved down a driveway – causing us to search for its tree; we explored a white, unusual medical complex/former home – urban fossils like scabs on its walls, an abandoned fireplace, and a basketball hoop. Nearby we found freshly poured tar and another white structure with an unknown purpose. We walked into Top Drawer Consignments from the back entrance, the patch of landscaping outside the door was inviting – floral plantings – and inside a change of smell and scenery. We weren’t able to track many smells on the walk – faint burger grease outdoors and eucalyptus or unknown candle scents mixed inside the shop. On the way back to Downtown Credo (our starting and ending spot) we used the sidewalks in front of the buildings – sitting down on benches to pay attention to the waves of cars and the sounds from their radios and passengers – stopping and starting and rolling forward.
Share this:
A New Destination Journal Year: 2015
Here are a few new, and not-so-new, musings and ongoing goals for 2015. Many are repeat visitors from 2014.
Not large and loud and with a big crowd. Hoping to continue with Destination Journal in 2015 on a small and intimate scale. Workshops and walks in unusual spaces are on the horizon.
Hope to complete some new work based on past inspiration within The Sensory Space of A Bus and other projects.
Book, books, books. Adding some new ones to my collection in 2015 and continue to use them as inspiration for Destination Journal. I particularly adore Visual Editions. Over the past year, I created The Briefcase Library, an underground library with ongoing checkouts and no late fees for Friends of the Briefcase Library. I post images now and then on Instagram: dinamackdj. Also hope to work on more artist book collaborations and to spend more time in libraries, big and small.
Still learning, gathering, asking questions related to the sense of smell. Continuing to incorporate this and the other senses in my artwork, walks, and workshops. I will greatly miss an inspiration and gracious mentor in this area, Victoria Henshaw, who passed away last year.
The studio, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the swimming pool. More of all three in 2015.
The Sensory Times – I started working on this body of work later last year and am now four issues in.
Little flowers, stems, pods, roots. I STILL love you.
Dollhouse Timeshare. Hope to spend some time with the Dollhouse Timeshare Homeowner’s Association this year.
Here’s to a wonderful January and Happy New-ish Year!
Destination Journal 