Conversations with Sydney Buffman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sydney Buffman.

Hi Syd, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Hi! I’m a perfumer, an art director, and an artist. I founded a house for niche perfumery and scent art called SYD Botanica. I originally launched in 2015, making handmade incense. I recently re-launched my website with some new perfumes, and have plans for more releases throughout the year and into 2023. SYD Botanica is technically a “brand” but I’m more interested in thinking of it as an art project.

I graduated from California College of the Arts in the Bay Area. In school, it was hard for me to commit to one major. I’ve always had an affinity for science and nature, and I’ve always loved to work in a variety of mediums artistically. I decided to go into design because a teacher of mine once said “as a designer you will use everything you’ve ever learned.” In my experience this has really been true.

After graduation, I became obsessed with perfumery. The potential for transformation of mood and the feelings of poetic beauty just blew me away. At the beginning of my design career, I met indie perfumer Yosh Han and I continued to work with her for many years. Reading the notes of perfumes led to a deeper desire to learn more about plants. I enrolled in an herbalism school, not knowing what I would do with this education. I studied with different teachers over the years, including a couple who were practicing alchemists from a real lineage. Studying with them was life-changing. I learned distillation, medicine-making techniques, and most importantly I learned how to develop a poetic relationship with plants, nature, and cycles of time.

Then, I met my partner Eric. He’s a mathematician and he was finishing up his Ph.D. at University of Hawaii. We fell in love right away, and after a year of dating long-distance, I left San Francisco and moved to Oahu. I started the first incarnation of SYD Botanica at this time. I thought I’d want to sell tinctures, balms, or other kinds of herbalist wares- but I found myself being very drawn to incense making. For me, this united my interests in scent art and herbalism. I applied basic perfumery structure into my incense blends. The word “perfume” literally means “through smoke” in Latin.

In 2016 we moved to Warsaw, Poland, where Eric had a postdoc position. Inspired by the art and design I saw, I began to develop my own illustration style.

We then moved to Boulder, Colorado in 2018. There I met my perfumery mentor, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, one of the pioneers of American indie and niche perfumery. She’s an absolute genius and I owe her everything. From 2019 to 2021 I was art director for the perfume publishing house Scent Trunk.

In 2021 we moved to Los Angeles, and it’s been a time of abundance and personal growth. I’ve been very happy here so far! I’ve spent the last year formulating my newest releases.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Nothing but smooth road for me. Just kidding! Of course, it’s been mixed.

In my career, I’ve followed my heart and my intuition with trust, even though I’ve also struggled with self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Things haven’t always worked out the way I expect them to, but there’s always something to learn from the experience (even the bad ones).

And now we are simply living in challenging times. Everyone is feeling it and everyone is struggling on some level. The price of everything has gone up and I often worry about the future and sustainability of my art practice, even just in terms of sourcing my materials. Starting a small business while dealing with fluctuating supply chains and so much general instability has been difficult.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a perfumer, but my work is informed by my interdisciplinary background. I think of each piece as stepping into an imaginary world and I express these worlds through perfume, illustration, and poetry. Each medium influences the others, and I work on them simultaneously. I try to create a space that someone else can project themselves into. The end result is something that feels very personal for both myself and the person interacting with the work.

When I moved to LA, I started working on a series of alchemical plant drawings. Each plant took on its own kind of sentience. I tried to sit with them and honor them, and depict them the way they wanted to be depicted- giving myself over in service to these beings that sprang from my imagination. The perfumes are formulated in a similar way, through intuition, expression of elemental qualities, and imagining the kind of environments in which these fantasy plants live. And then poetry gives people a narrative entryway into these worlds, with just enough abstraction for them to relate their own personal experience.

Recently, I was in a group art show inspired by alchemy at the Philosophical Research Society, curated by Eliza Emerald Swann of the Golden Dome school. For the show I made three plant posters, three perfumes, and three poems, each creating a multi-sensory experience inspired by the first three stages of the alchemical process. I’m really proud of this work, and my goal for next year is to finish the entire series, with seven concepts in total, and show them in a gallery.

Contact Info:

• Website: Sydbotanica.com
• Instagram: @sydbotanica
• TikTok: @sydbotanica

Image Credits
Sam Cannon