Chris Rusak of Chris Rusak Perfume
Profile: Scent has always been my primary gateway to the world. My earliest memories are pinned to the odors which blanketed those moments: the cold metal and tile of the hospital when I broke my arm; the skunk cabbage in the swamps of the woods in which I played; the liquor of shucked clams ubiquitous at every family summer picnic. My most vivid sensory experiences, whether joyous or no, all seem to be first stamped with a record of its air. I grew up in New England in a lower-middle class family with a hard-work ethic and its share of problems, but a strong, innate creative energy on which I relied to cope and survive somehow helped carry me through most of our darker days. Despite hoping to study art once I left my hometown, my first college venture was business administration, a decision made via the forced encouragement of my parents, but a venture that only lasted about 18 months before I dropped out. A few years after, and with a committed attitude, I pursued art on my terms and participated in my first public exhibition in 2002.
Tension Acrylic on Fiberglass© Chris Rusak
Painting offered me a particular joy, a sense of discovery and escape. Working with myriad pure colors felt alchemical. But I especially remember how primal and earthly painting smelled — its linseed oil, sanded chalky gesso, and sharp wooden frames — keeping me intrigued with its process. It was fun and stimulating making those works, regardless of their end. Every moment was memorable.
On Being an American Perfumer: I think my story, like so many other perfumers, fits in well with traditional cultural American narratives. We are a country assembled of innovators, of disruptors, of naysayers, of explorers. Despite how anyone feels about capitalism and its effects on society, or about the contentious origins of America itself, we can agree that, here, hard work and dedication begets survival. And for artists, especially in our contemporary economy, survival is often a daily puzzle; the fine art world especially is not very financially rewarding. So many of us are living on threads, week-to-week or worse. America is also greatly about risk-taking, of which becoming a perfumer is a textbook example. I don't think I've made a more insane sounding argument to do something in which I deeply believed than that moment when, after suddenly finding myself homeless and living in my car on campgrounds a few years ago, I reasoned that pursuing perfumery as a creative business was my only option for survival as a person and an artist.
View from Chris' studio
I think today, all over the country and especially in Los Angeles with the Institute for Art and Olfaction, American indie perfumery is having an avant garde moment. It's a bit wild west. It's a bit abstract expressionism. It's a bit insane. It's a lot of failure amongst astounding successes. And it's also a lot of reflecting senses of America as a place, of artists innovating new means for creative production.
Chris with our 1st American Perfumer of our series…7/1/11 Dawn Spencer Hurwitz at the A +O Biennial Scent Fair
All of my experiences and realizations — years of voraciously studying art, the somewhat unforeseen, immediate plummets of adulthood, ad-hoc living under canopies of sequoias during seasons of wildfires, fear of failure and loss — influence my studio work. Today, that is ultimately about restoring our sensibilities in our heavily digital world. It's about pleasure and reflections of the natural world. Studies of materials and the crafting of intangible places. And personally, it's simply about survival.
Photo of the Rothko Chapel© Judith Kurnack
Favorite American Artist: Looking back on my artistic adolescence, I now see how and why I gravitated toward color as my primary language. I was then seriously drawn to the work of Mark Rothko, a painter whose tone and structure greatly relied on color. Eventually I branched out into other media, particularly collage, using ripped pages of books to make obsessive studies of accumulative texture. However, I think had perfumery materials been more prominent and available at the time, I'd have likely instead gravitated that way. As a teenager I had worked the perfume counter at a large department store, and was already bitten by the fragrance bug. But because there were no scent-centric materials being sold in any art stores, to work with scent artistically, it just wasn't even an idea on my radar.In the following years I steadily maintained a studio practice and exhibited wherever I could. After a period of unemployment during the last bubble burst, I returned to college to finally finish a degree, and after much hard work ended up at UCLA as an art history research scholar. There, I instead discovered a larger love for the world of philosophy, especially aesthetics, but in a metaphysical sense and not as a determination of beauty. Yet I noticed that both of these disciplines rarely in any serious way discuss scent and the sense of smell. In fact, I don't recall once discussing scent with respect to artistic objects, a notable exception being ancient perfume amphoras. Why not? This void gnawed at me.
On the encouragement of some good friends to question this gap, I started purchasing fragrance materials and retreated to the studio to play. And wow, did I fall down the rabbit hole hard: Perfume materials were color. They were texture. They are intangible structures. They are literally similar assemblies of the chemical precursors to paint, to paper, to the object world as we know it. I forewent interest in visual materials and became consumed with learning how perfumery worked. It was an immediate no-brainer for me: This was the future of my creative practice.
–Chris Rusak of Chris Rusak Perfume
Thanks to Chris Rusak of Chris Rusak Perfume, we have a draw for two winners, one domestic and one international: To be eligible you must be a registered reader in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, or Saudi Arabia (a winner from the USA will receive a 30ml bottle
and
An International winner will receive a 15ml bottle of their choosing, based on availability). You must be registered or your comment will not count. Tell us what you found fascinating about Chris' path to perfumery and where you live. Draw closes March 6, 2019
Also tell us which Chris Rusak perfume you would like to win, (choices are Io, Quasi Una Absurdia,33, Bluer Skies, Whenever You Are Around OR opt for a sampler of all 4.
Please like CaFleurebon Profiles in American Perfumery on Facebook and your entry will count twice. Please leave that in your comment.
Chris Rusak is our 142nd American perfumer in our series. All photos belong to Chris Rusak of Chris Rusak Perfume unless otherwise noted.
Follow us on Instagram @cafleurebon and @chris.rusak.perfume
We announce the winners on our site and our Facebook page so like Cafleurebon and use our blog feed…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume.