Hot August Night: Gazing with the Nose

Scentorium and Olfactory Salon

Laure Drogoul

Friday, August 7, 2026, 6:00-9:00 PM

Scent Salon (Artist Performance Activation): 6:30-8:30 PM

For our annual Hot August Night, Grizzly Grizzly presents Gazing with the Nose: Scentorium and Olfactory Salon, a one-night participatory performance by interdisciplinary artist Laure Drogoul. Using scent as a medium, this activated installation explores the powerful relationship between smell, memory, place, and collective experience.

Transforming the gallery into a dreamy scentorium, Drogoul invites visitors to navigate an environment of sculptural scent specimens, atmospheric sound, and subtle illumination. Ornamenting the walls are biomorphic ceramic forms made by embedding scent into raw clay and low firing to preserve the aroma. The installation becomes the stage for a participatory performance in which audience members are invited to engage directly with olfactory experiences that challenge perception and awaken memory. Acting as the Hostess of Smell, Drogoul blindfolds her participants to awaken emotional and psychological landscapes created through the sense of smell. 

The installation extends Drogoul's long-running Olfactory Factory project, an ongoing body of work investigating smell perception as a means of understanding our environments and one another. Through sculpture, performance, mapping, and public participation, Olfactory Factory examines how scent shapes our emotional connection to place. Visitors are encouraged to contribute to the evolving project through the online interactive smell map and survey at olfactoryfactory.org.

Rather than asking viewers simply to observe, Gazing with the Nose encourages active participation. Within this intimate sensory landscape, smell becomes both subject and medium, creating opportunities for conversation, recollection, and unexpected encounters. The work asks us to consider how the invisible world of scent influences our understanding of history, community, and the spaces we inhabit, a recurring theme throughout Drogoul's practice.

Artist Bio:

Laure Drogoul (Baltimore, MD)  is an interdisciplinary artist and olfactory spelunker based in downtown Baltimore. She works across a wide range of materials and creates interactive projects that include sculpture, installation, and performance. Drogoul's artwork embraces play, humor, and horror as a means of inviting viewers into active participation. Her projects center on the tension between the natural world and the human-made environment. Through immersive, multi-sensory experiences, Laure explores cultural and environmental phenomena, reflecting on the sensory relationship between humans and the world they inhabit.

Originally from New Jersey, Drogoul earned a BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art's Rinehart School of Sculpture in Baltimore. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the International House of Japan in Tokyo, Gallery Kvadart in Russia, Washington Project for the Arts, the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center, Spring/Break Art Show, Art In Odd Places in NYC and numerous galleries throughout Baltimore. Her work has also appeared in public spaces, including street corners, alleys, and other urban environments, extending her practice beyond traditional gallery settings.