Tell us a little about your background. What led you to fragrance?

My fascination with fragrance began early. As a teenager, I spent hours wandering department stores sampling perfumes, captivated by their ability to evoke emotion, imagination, and even new identities.

Years later, while studying depth psychology and herbalism, I became immersed in the alchemical processes of distillation, blending, and plant medicine. Living first in Baltimore and later in Marfa, I maintained a medicinal herb garden, kept bees, and created botanical syrups, tinctures, bitters, and herbal cocktails for art events, music venues, and supper clubs.

What began as a small bitters business evolved into a deeper interest in fragrance. I realized that perfume combined everything I loved: storytelling, psychology, botany, and creative experimentation. I spent years developing blends, testing them across different environments—from the high desert of Marfa to the California coast—observing how scent transformed with place and atmosphere.

That process led to the launch of Mythopoesis, my first fragrance collection, which remains the foundation of the brand today. Since then, I've continued creating fragrances that explore archetypes, landscapes, memory, and transformation through scent.

How does your current environment shape the way you create scent?

For ten years I lived in Marfa, Texas, and it continues to influence my creative process. I now live in the forests of upstate Connecticut, where the landscape offers entirely different inspirations, from tree saps and lichens to the damp, green richness of the woods.

What continues to draw me back to Marfa is its sense of expansiveness. The vast sky, endless horizon, and slower perception of time create a heightened awareness of the natural world. It's a place that encourages observation and shifts the way you experience time, space, and the senses. That contrast between the desert and the forest continues to shape the fragrances I create today.

Fray Ardens feels both elemental and intimate. How would you describe the world of the line?

I think those are apt descriptions. The intimacy comes from the end-use of the product as much as it comes from the intimacy and mirror of the space that Marfa inhabits, where the entire line was concepted, born, and formulated. Marfa is intimate in it’s square mile footprint as it is in it’s small community. But perfume is interesting to me because it can so swiftly change the mood. Day to night (this was promised via weird, seemingly convertible outfits in magazine spreads in my youth but no one really did this once I used to work in an actual office environment before shifting to psychology, and I saw nary a convertible outfit). However, regardless of if you took style hints from magazines or not, spritz a deeper scent and it does transform the “fit.”

There are psychological and alchemical elements baked into the blending as well. When I started the line I was reading more original text and a lot of Jungian works (I studied Jungian and depth psychologies) and alchemical texts are used as metaphors for psychological transformation. 

Can you share a bit about the craftsmanship behind your fragrances — materials, process, or rituals you return to?

Before any creative experience, I tap into a somatic experience. I can be very head-y, so I have to drop in. Some breathing, a walk outside. In Marfa especially, if I get overwhelmed, or confused about creative direction (scent can take over)- rather than coffee beans as a nose palate cleanser, I would take a long walk which resets everything.

And with any creative project, I like to set the tone- candles, music, a pot of tea.

Do you begin with a place, a material, or a mood when developing a scent?

I often begin with an archetype, character, or sense of place rather than a specific material. During my years in Marfa, my studio was housed in a former church, and that environment frequently informed my work. One fragrance, Frau, began with a simple question: if a "church lady" has a recognizable scent, what would a "secular lady" smell like? The result was a modern interpretation of powder and soap, elevated with peony and cedarwood.

Other fragrances begin with visual or emotional inspiration. Nouveau Ranch, for example, was inspired by blue grama grass, a desert grass that resembles eyelashes. Rather than capturing its actual scent, I explored what it might smell like through observation, journaling, long desert walks, and an interest in synesthesia.

While Marfa is woven throughout the collection, Fray Ardens is less about creating traditional desert fragrances and more about exploring archetypes, stories, and characters through scent.

What do you listen to while you’re working or blending?

I used to work almost exclusively with music on in the background, mostly ambient and electronic artists like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Suzanne Ciani, Brian Eno, Mary Lattimore, and Hauschka. That kind of music creates a sense of space and openness that complements the blending process.

These days, because I spend much of my time in my psychotherapy practice, I also listen to podcasts and audiobooks while working, especially when batching existing formulas. I've always felt that scent and sound are deeply connected, both are built from layers, harmonies, and chords.

In 2019, I explored that relationship through a project called Pistilphilia, where I sent fragrances from the Mythopoesis collection to musicians Mary Lattimore, Julianna Barwick, and Meg Baird, who each composed a short piece inspired by a scent. The music was paired with films by Emma Rogers.

And, if I'm being completely honest, sometimes the soundtrack to a long blending day is simply a few episodes of Love Island to keep me in my chair.

What’s currently in your culture queue, music, books, films, or exhibitions?

I'm currently in a novel-reading phase, balanced with a steady stream of nonfiction related to psychology, ecology, and ongoing projects. Recent favorites include Reproduction by Louisa May, The Shame by Makenna Goodman, stories by Clarice Lispector, and Monsters by Claire Dederer.

On the film and performance side, I loved Oh, Mary! and am eager to see it again. I'm also working my way through Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self. As for exhibitions, I'm looking forward to seeing Domenico Gnoli at Levy Gorvy Dayan and Frida and Diego: The Last Dream at MoMA. I still find myself thinking about the Meret Oppenheim exhibition at MoMA and last summer's Noguchi show at The Clark, both left a lasting impression.

Do you have a personal uniform or way of dressing when you work?

I am still loving the boxy norm-core look - wide leg pants and maybe a cropped oxford with a big jacket over it is my current uniform. If I am doing a lot of mixing or blending I have these Fog Linen aprons that I also use as a summer layer that I’ll throw on over.

What can’t you live without right now?

A hot water bottle! This is less necessary in Marfa, but when in Connecticut, this is almost an all-season thing for me but particularly in the winter of course. Also taper candles. I need a taper candle budget because I have them lit constantly. I have been liking lighting them in the morning while waking up slowly. I am trying to burn more beeswax ones because they ionize and clean the air! A bathtub- I take a bath a day, with bath salts. Eletrolytes! Decaf chai from Kolkata Co. Magnesium cream to put on your feet and legs before bed (these last three are really aging me, I think). 

What does scent allow you to express that other mediums don’t?

This is a great question that I am still trying to explain to myself. I want to say, space. I am a hobbyist visual artist and often times I get annoyed that I can’t paint or draw something that I see (or exactly how I see it in my mind’s eye). Design solved this for me in my first career because of the amount of iterating, the CAD usage, and rendering, and even the stages of how you design something nicely evens out the final product and I found it was much easier for me to actualize something by stepping it out to conceptualization, development, and finalization. And as I describe this, I am realizing this is how I work with scent. Perhaps it’s less ineffable than I thought…

What draws you to a fragrance personally? What makes you fall in love with one?

I have become more sensitive as I have gotten older. Perhaps a metaphor. So I used to like a whole array of types of fragrances, though musks have always been a favorite, but I have a harder time with vert and chypre scents now- or at least they have to be more mellow. I generally love something that is complex, nuanced and deep.