PATRICK O’DONNELL’S ASSEMBLAGE:
SANTA AND FRIEND
GATHERED AROUND A DIFFUSER CUP PERCHED ON A CITRON
PATRICK’S STATEMENT:
“My relation to scent is tenuous.
Since I was born, I have been afflicted with allergies
which cause my nose to be congested most of the time.
If a scent is not either very strong or very close to me,
I will not notice it.
You could call it ‘nearscentedness.’
The items in the assemblage I fostered
were held together by two things:
they were very disparate objects
grouped close to (or on top of) one another,
and the strong medicinal scent in the little cup with a little bird on the rim
that seemed to want to be
always between the two larger human figures...
...The strong medicinal scent became less strong
once I moved the assembly from the original location in my bathroom
into the living room, a much larger space.
And then tragedy struck; the assembly was shaken in its new location
and the cup with the bird fell and shattered.
The scent lingered for some time on the glass cart it fell on,
but, without a container to hold it, drifted away.
The human figures remained
to try and figure out what had happened to them,
and who they were.
One was obviously supposed to represent Santa Claus,
but the other was a mystery -
a bearded man wearing what looked like a lion's skin
with his arms crossed over his chest.
Could it be Hercules? Some research and random reading
got me a little closer to his origin, I think, but not too close.
Their questions remain unresolved as of this writing.”
- Patrick O’Donnell
PATRICK”S CONTRACT (COMPLETE)