In 2017, Manon Bellet began field research to extract scents from specific areas of the Mississippi Delta region affected by coastal erosion. She sampled natural flora and fauna, water and soil and sentimental objects of the people who lived there. Through her research and studio practice, Bellet creates a multisensory body of work that plays with what we see, hear, smell and feel.
Exhibition Dates:
August 23 – December 30, 2022
Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Galleries
Through the beauty of fragrance, this exhibition explores Bellet’s concern with landscapes lost through the effects of time, global warming, or urban sprawl. As smells often do, Bellet’s scent sculptures evoke unique memories. Still, these detached odors allow for a shared journey, creating new, collective remembrances Bellet associates with extinction, risk, or loss.
A Swallow Does Not Make a Summer is the second iteration in the Radical Naturalism series of exhibitions. Contemporary artists are invited as guest curators to work with Auburn University’s collections and present representations of the natural world. Alongside her pieces, Bellet selected prints by John James Audubon and Warrington Colescott to pair with specimens from Auburn’s Museum of Natural History.
Scents Featured in Exhibition
Magnolia Flowers, with the collaboration of Hazeltine New Orleans, 2022
Honey, with the collaboration of Andreas Wilhlem, perfumer, Zurich Switzerland, 2022
Golden waste, water extraction with the collaboration of Andreas Wilhlem, perfumer, Zurich Switzerland, 2021
Land of water, water extraction with the collaboration of Andreas Wilhlem, perfumer, Zurich Switzerland, 2021
Warrington Colescott (American, 1921-2018)
Suite Louisiana; Audubon in the Atchafalaya, 1994
Hand-painted color etching
31 1/2 x 47 1/2 inches (sheet size)
Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University
Gift of Lynn Barstis Williams to the Imprinting the South Collection
2008.11.37
John James Audubon (French American, b. Haiti, 1785–1851)
Night Heron or Qua bird, 1860
Chromolithograph
26 1/2 x 39 5/8 inches (mat size)
Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University
The Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection
1992.01.02.13
John James Audubon
(French American, b. Haiti, 1785–1851)
Black-billed Cuckoo, 1828
Hand-colored etching, aquatint, and line engraving
26 x 38 3/4 inches (sheet size)
Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University
The Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection 1992.01.01.15
John James Audubon
(French American, b. Haiti, 1785–1851)
Bachman’s Warbler, 1833
Hand-colored etching, aquatint, and line engraving
39 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches
Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University
The Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection
1992.01.01.07
