Small New York City secret: Sunday nights at Ace Hotel is a haven for the city's young artistic elite and serves as an open call for the curious creative inside every city dweller. Selected artists - from painters to musicians- showcase their work in a private interactive experience as part of Ace Hotel's Artists in Residence series, a night for artists to give their ideas some space to expand and fester and bloom.
ACE Air (Artist's In Residence) is hosted in one of the hotel's many funk inspired suites and has partnered with institutions such as The Museum of Art & Design, Tomorrow Lab, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, Tumblr, Printed Matter and Flux Factory.
ast Sunday's experience, SENSExUNDO, was inspired by the sense of smell and marked by the cumulation of the UNDO-Ordinary NYC magazine launch experience (Issue V). It aptly featured Amaris Modesto, a Manhattan-based mixed media and fragrance artist who believes in putting forth new possibilities in the midst of chaos. Her all-natural home fragrance line, SENSE, started two years ago as a haiku inspired aromatherapy line. Modesto says this a business endeavor was led by scientific curiosity:
"Scent has the strongest correlation to memory and emotion out of the five human senses. And I wanted to explore the science behind this further."True to the SENSE brand, words were the pathway into the creation of fragrances during Modesto's interactive installation last Sunday night. Against pre-curated prompts, over 65 guests used words to describe their memories and insights in order to establish themes for their fragrances. Elixirs were mixed from a base of scented waters, and a combination of sweet, citrus, oceanic, almond and earthen infused oils, all of which were selected to match the guests' themes. The guests' creative fragrances were then paired with original poetry from The Haiku Guys, a company of performance poets based in NYC, LA, DC and the Berkshires. Click here for a 60-second recap of SENSExUNDO.
