What Smell Looks Like

Sensation: Interior View (2006) was created by Jersey City artist Nancy Cohen as an abstract sculpture about the sense of smell and how odors are recognized and remembered.  Multi-colored cast resin discs are affixed to a steel armature, forming a wall that connects to bulb-shaped structures by vibrant wires.  The different colors of discs represent the sensor neurons in the nose that detect different odorant molecules; the wires represent the axonal connections that pass through the skull to the olfactory bulb in the brain, with the neurons from each type of sensor going to their own specific region in the olfactory bulb.  To view this and other sculpture at Princeton's Quark Park, visit the park's Web site at http://www.princetonoccasion.org/quarkpark/index.html.

Credit: Sensation: Interior View by Nancy Cohen, Jim Sturm, Shirley Tilghman, A.R. Willey; Edward Greenblat, photographer.