IAO Olfactory Storylab at Craft Contemporary

About IAO Storylab

Saturday, July 5, 2025
Debbie Lin and Na-Moya Lawrence
SAMAR

SAMAR is an indie perfumery using scent to explore the liminal space where uncanny realism and dreamy fantasy unite. Perfumery is a natural coupling of art and science that exists to both spark curiosity and bring us joy. While many avenues of self expression are visual and fraught with ever-changing beauty standards, we feel that anointing oneself with perfume is a uniquely personal ritual. Any “note” is worthy of becoming the focal point of a story, so it’s with that perspective we craft lush olfactory narratives that transport wearers to moments both familiar and surreal. Beyond the desire for creative expression, shaping SAMAR was also motivated by our drive to contribute meaningfully to our communities. We aim to have a positive impact by fundraising for and volunteering with grassroots mutual aid groups providing vital services both here at home and to our global community. We believe that indulging in kindness is key to connection and communal happiness!

Saturday, July 12, 2025
L’lia ‘Tizzle’ Thomas
Aromakaura

L’lia (Eye-Lee-Uh), also known as TIZZLE, is a Multipassionate Artist, Intuitive Perfumer, Astrology Oracle, and former Arts Educator whose work explores scent as a bridge between personal mythology and ancestral memory. She is the creatrix behind AROMAKAURA, a soul-led brand offering Reiki-infused perfume blends and elemental rituals that support inner transformation and energetic alignment. With certifications in Medicinal Aromatherapy and Reiki, and advanced degrees in Art Education and Psychology, her practice blends Elemental Perfumery, Intuitive Arts, and energy work to support deep emotional alchemy. Drawing from her Afro-Indigenous lineage, TIZZLE creates custom scents as tools for ritual, remembrance, and reconnection. Her approach is both sensory and spiritual—honoring the unseen, the inner child, and the wisdom of the natural world. As a storyteller through scent, she treats perfume as a language of feeling—a way to decode the past, reclaim power, and realign with sacred truth.

Scent: The Quiet Between
In The Quiet Between, scent becomes a vessel for transition—a scent for moving through the thresholds of grief, sensuality, and sacred becoming. Guided by African goddesses revered across diasporic traditions: Yemaya: Saltwater embrace; Ala: Grounding earth; Erzulie Dantor: Protective heat; Ayizan: Veiled air; Qetesh: Sacred pulse.
Notes: Oceanic, earthy, metallic, quietly fruity, floral, and spiced.

Saturday, July 19, 2025
Saskia Wilson-Brown
The Institute for Art and Olfaction

Saskia Wilson-Brown is an artist who works across media to explore ideas that are interesting to her. This is most often expressed through collaborative social practice works (and most commonly through the Institute for Art and Olfaction), but often also incorporates other creative expressions, including education, curation, community events, visual art, writing, film-making, and scent. In addition to running the Institute for Art and Olfaction, she is finishing a book with D.A.P.|Distributed Art Publishers, and working on a PhD at University College Dublin’s SmartLab.

Web: artandolfaction.com | saskiawilsonbrown.com
IG: @saskiacwb

Saturday, July 26, 2025
Terry Carter
Travertine Spa Atelier

Terry is the Chief Perfumer and Founder of Travertine Spa Atelier. Terry brings more than 20 years of experience and extensive perspective to the table. He is in collaboration with Osmo Labs on the forefront of fragrance technology. Terry is an accomplished legal scholar, businessman and a Paris-trained perfumer. He custom formulates fragrance and body care products for ultra-luxe resorts, multinational corporations and is a perfumery educator. He blends bespoke perfumes for celebrities but rarely name drops. Terry’s branded product received the distinction of a Forbes travel product of the year. He has been quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Entrepreneur, Medium and in HuffPost. Travertine products have been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, BRAVO, FOX, EXTRA and NPR.

Scent: Strange Fruit: Extrait d’Humain
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Notes: None listed. Part of this work is discovery.

Saturday, August 2, 2025
Persephenie
Persephenie Botanicals

Persphenie is a creative with interests in art, design, and the olfactory. Her expertise is in perfumery and incense, and she moonlights as a painter and crafter. With personal shifting priorities and existing in complex times, sharing a different aspect of her work and offering experiential encounters feels intimately important and relevant. She opened her aromatic studio in 2004, and has been teaching scent related classes since 2006. She has a small, specialized line using natural and rare materials, and occasionally she develops scent for other brands. She looks forward to extending her art into new experiences.

Scent: Tree House
Tree House is inspired by my childhood yearning for nature, security, and magic. Upon entering the installation espíritu y tierra by Andrés Cortes,  a wave of nostalgia and longing ran through me. The olfactory aspect that I craved for my younger self, in this pieced together sanctuary, was the multi-dimensional scent of plants, earth, and flowers—alongside smoke and warmth.
Notes: Orange blossom, rose, jasmine, cedar, patchouli, vetiver, cade.

Saturday, August 9, 2025
Daniel Krasofski
The Institute for Art and Olfaction

Daniel Krasofski is a fragrance artist, perfumer, and educator whose lifelong passion for scent began at age five during a formative visit to a Bermudian perfumery, where he first encountered the art of enfleurage and distillation. Raised in North Dakota, his work is deeply informed by an early appreciation for Native American lore and the natural world. With a background in Ayurveda and aromatherapy, Krasofski spent two decades developing spa products and consulting for leading resorts worldwide before dedicating himself fully to perfumery. As Lab Manager at the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles, he teaches, mentors, and fosters global community among independent and experimental perfumers, while also helping to produce the Art+Olfaction Awards. His creative projects span historically inspired fragrances, collaborations with the entertainment industry, and olfactory art installations, all reflecting his commitment to scent as both an aesthetic and holistic experience.

Scent: ICARIA – Eau de Cautione V#2, A Heeded Caution
In the opening lines of Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus,” we are introduced to Faustus with the words: “Till, swoll’n with cunning, of a self-conceit, / His waxen wings did mount above his reach, / And, melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.” This reference to Icarus immediately frames Faustus’s ambitions within the myth’s cautionary tale. We see both characters rising to forbidden heights, only to be brought down by their own hubris and desire to transcend mortal limitations. In both stories, each is warned not to overstep the bounds of nature. Yet, intoxicated by their dreams, they both ignore the warnings. This story, this  myth, has inspired the idea that there is always a possibility of redemption… if one heeds the caution. Icaria- Eau de Cautione ultimately became two versions: V1 Unheeded (undisplayed) & V2 Heeded (on display).
Notes (V2 Heeded): Wild rosemary, sun-warmed bushes, sun-dried feathers, salty sea breeze.

Web: artandolfaction.com
IG: @d_Krasofski

Saturday, August 16, 2025
Miss Layla
fum Fragrances

Miss Layla is an interdisciplinary artist and self taught perfumer. Her diverse background and interest in the arts inspired her creative journey into the world of perfumery. Layla believes in perfume’s ability to conjure unseen worlds. Using scent as a medium, she creates from within to weave her fragrance compositions into narratives that transport the wearer to far off landscapes, places within imagination and beyond.

Saturday, August 23, 2025
Maxwell Williams
UFO Parfums

Maxwell Williams is a perfumer, olfactory artist, researcher, DJ/producer, and writer based in Los Angeles. They have been the subject of solo exhibitions and presentations at Olfactory Art Keller, New York (2022 and 2024); the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA, 2023); the Institute for Art & Olfaction, Los Angeles (2022); Galerie de Thorigny, Paris (2020); and SEASON, Seattle (2019). They have collaborated with artists including Sean Raspet, Parker Ito, DJ Python, Bri Williams, Ry Rocklen, Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, Natasha Tomchin, Ariana Reines, Reggie Watts, and Paul Kopkau to bring scent into the gallery or performance space; and brands including Everybody.World, Cinnabon, Come Tees, OBEY, and Boot Boyz to create perfumes. They founded UFO Parfums in 2019.

Scent: Emily’s Bridge
The Gold Brook Covered Bridge aka Emily’s Bridge in Stowe, Vermont is haunted by the ghost of Emily, a young woman who leapt to her death onto the rocks below after being spurned by her true love. She has haunted the bridge ever since. My late father, Douglas — known as Dougie to my mother — was a socialist construction worker who worked on the bridge’s restoration in the 1970s. It is as much Dougie’s Bridge as it is Emily’s.
Notes: Ghost pine, hemlock, ectoplasm, Douglas fir.

Saturday, August 30 2025
Julianne Lee
The Institute for Art and Olfaction

Julianne Lee is a perfumer and writer. With a B.A. in visual art and philosophy from Bennington College and a technical degree from the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, she currently serves as Director of Projects at the Institute for Art and Olfaction. Beyond client work in fine fragrance formulation, she exhibits olfactory art installations, collaborates with artists on cross-modal projects, and has presented research challenging orientalism in the perfume industry.

Scent: To come

Web: artandolfaction.com
IG: @j_s_e_l