Kelly Diehl

In class we made mind maps of two ideas from our gathering assignment. I chose to map the smell of Florence and the sculpture in the Piazza d'Ognissanti. The sculpture is of a man wrestling with a lion. Rather than violent, I see the connection between the two as desperate, as if the man is clutching the lion for dear life because he doesn't want it to leave him. Looking at it inspires a physical reaction in me and brought up associations with heroism, sex, and desperation, among other things. Jana summed it up, telling me to focus on 'connection and difference'. The smell map explores cause, states of matter, and color. It was easier to make the ink drawings about smell, since it is formless to begin with. If I made pieces from these ideas, the sculpture would have to be sculptural, maybe constructed with large metal sheets. I don't know what form it would take--something that would make the viewer feel heavy in the shoulders, which is how the sculpture makes me feel. The smell would perhaps be an installation, a pathway with tons of the dangly, anxious squiggles (from one of ink drawings) hanging all around you from the ceiling, denser in some areas to translate how the smell here hits you in waves, cycles. I also thought about displaying containers of each of the substances that I think make up the smell here: urine, mildew, dog shit, cigarette smoke, and sweat. Sorry to be verbose.