Kassandra Thatcher

I grew up in NYC, I went to college in the Hudson Valley (at Bard). By the time I was 25 it felt like I hardly left the City. I’d traveled in my life for a few weeks at a time, but I’d never really been outside of New York.

When the pandemic hit, I’d already been wanting to leave NY for some time, but my whole family is from there. I’m an only child, my mom is a single mom; there was nothing that was going to push me to leave unless I was going somewhere, with someone.

When I met Alex, my partner, he wanted to move back to LA right after the pandemic hit. It was the right place, right time. I had to move out of my apartment during COVID anyway, so at the end of 2020 we drove out here.in that kind of place — which feels like a surreal thing, when you’re surrounded by people who came here for and are achieving their dreams.

I grew up all over downtown, but I lived In Flatiron the longest stretch of time. I moved there when I was 9. That’s when we moved into the space where my parents had had their office. People loved coming over to my house because we had a urinal and stalls in one of the bathrooms because… it had been an office.

I love New York, but I felt like I couldn’t escape my childhood. I still talk about this with my friends who still live there today. Living in the City as an adult, in the same city where you grew up, that also turns out to be a place where people move to start their lives, can feel very strange. Because when you walk down the street, you’re still in your childhood home. It felt hard to grow up and have an autonomous self in that kind of place — which feels like a surreal thing, when you’re surrounded by people who came here for and are achieving their dreams.

Yes and no. I felt creatively fulfilled in NY; I think it was more just separating myself from who I was growing up, and how I grew up… I feel like I needed the space to become what felt more real to me. In the City, I found myself replaying the scenario of who I thought other people wanted me to be,

I realized at some point I needed to create some physical space between myself as an adult and myself as a child to feel more confident in myself. I don’t think it made much of a difference for me, creatively — though there are many benefits to living in LA,. I think I had soured a bit on working in art and design in NY, and how close to the chest everyone was about their work there. It felt like everyone was trying to get to the top. That didn’t really align with me. In that sense, LA has been good for me creatively. I feel like I’ve been able to focus more on what I want to be doing with my career, rather than looking around me and thinking “Oh, I should be doing that” because I’m contextualizing the world around me. Here, it’s been easier for me to pursue my own train of thought and ideas.

I think everyone should leave the place where they were raised! I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders growing up… due to complicated family stuff. When I was younger I took everything really seriously — which I also think is sort of inevitable when you grow up in the City. You’re taking the train by yourself when you’re 12, 13 years old, learning how to navigate those experiences… I think that gives you a false sense of being an adult and that you’re on your own.

And then I got to 25, 26, when I moved here… and realized there are so many things that make me not an adult. I was going through the same changes people go through at 18 when they leave home. Because so many people do leave and go somewhere far from home at that age. I still am amazed at how much you can be affected by leaving the place where you grew up.

Mostly because of the space you can get, physically. I have a great studio that I really love. It’s absolutely something that does not exist in NY and wouldn’t exist in NY. Also it being a driving city weirdly works really well for what I do. Because I’m transporting stuff all the time, it’s actually more conducive, logistically, than New York, where that’s harder to do.

All that said, I do miss New York a lot! The further and longer I’ve been away from there, the more I’ve missed being able to walk outside, socialize more easily. Many of the same things I criticized about it when I left are now things I miss! It’s so easy to distract yourself because there is so much going on around you. Whereas here in LA, you’re really just with yourself a lot. So I miss that saturation with the world,.

I will always be a New Yorker at heart. I still have my NY license plate. I spend a lot of time there.

I didn’t always want to do it, though I definitely grew up in a creative family. In a way, that sort of confused me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was very lucky in that they really supported and wanted me to be a creative person. But I was always a shy kid, and I had a hard time expressing myself. So it was weird to be in this reverse situation where my family was putting me in the creative classes and I was like “I don’t want to go, I don’t want to do it,” because I was scared. And I think that ultimately was beneficial for me because it pushed me to open up.

But I think I was sort of all over the place growing up. I was into dance. I was in this young dance company. I did take ceramics in high school and was into it… but I’ll never forget, I had this moment. My high school boyfriend’s father was a pretty well-known artist, and his wife was a successful actress. I remember being at dinner with them and saying I wanted to be a ceramicist, and I remember them laughing at me. And I thought, “If these two very successful creative people are laughing at me, I should maybe rethink that.” For a while, I actually wanted to be a translator for Latin American literature. I went to school for writing, and loved studying Spanish. I have a BA in poetry.

I was working in a gallery as a communications assistant. I was at a desk all day, and it was the first time I didn’t have an actively creative life. Because I’d always been into ceramics, I got a membership at one of those clay studios, just to have a creative outlet.

And then I met this incredible woman, she had Lily Tomlin energy. Very wacky, vivacious, full of life. We bonded and would be in the studio at the same time. She wound up introducing me to this artist who made furniture out of plaster. She was like “You should work for him if you’re interested in pursuing art.” So I started doing some freelance assisting for him. This was in 2017, and I had never heard of collectible design or functional art before. I saw him doing that, and that’s when I thought “That’s what I want to do.” And I quit my job and started working in a restaurant and decided to pursue this...

I worked at King in the West Village and then Cervos. Cervos was the best. I had the most fun there. The only reason I stopped working there was because of the pandemic.

It’s really the best restaurant in New York!

On record! The food never misses. It’s incredible. It can be sort of affordable if you’re being conscious about it. You can also ball out there. There are well-priced wines. The ambiance is amazing. It’s so great. And they really fostered a great environment. The people I worked with were like my family. The owners make you feel like they trust you and it makes a bond.

I grew up working in restaurants in Montauk and that was the worst. Traumatizing. And I worked in restaurants during college upstate, and that was also horrible! So I’ve really seen the spectrum of what it can be.

Yes it was — sort of a forced leap! Things really took off for me during the pandemic. Which was psychologically strange. Everyone was at home, thinking about their space, and allocating their money toward things that make them feel better and good about their space.

I don’t know how prepared I was for that. After moving to LA, it’s taken me a couple of years to come down from the mindset and the position of having to say yes to everything and not necessarily being very active in pushing my career along. It’s maybe been a year and a half since I’ve come out with anything new. And it’s because I get into this cycle of saying yes to everything! That was the last couple of years. I feel like I’m shifting out of them now, which is exciting for me.

’m not a business person and never expected to be. I find it absolutely ridiculous that Liberal Arts education don’t require you to take a business class. They foster all this creativity and pursuing your own path, but then don’t equip you with the tools you need to actually do that. It isn’t like you just make art and sell it through someone’s studio. I’ve spent the last year thinking about how to keep this my full time gig, but not say yes to everything and end up burning myself out Making new things and exploring was the whole reason I wanted to do this.

It is funny how it can feel easier to be creative when you’re existing in the form of a non-creative thing.

Yeah. When the container is a creative thing, sometimes it feels harder to be creative.

I’m not that consistent about having that, though I do recognize that I would benefit from that immensely. I wake up, and definitely the first thing that happens is — the coffee’s on. My partner is so specific about it. So we’ll go through these different styles of making coffee. I let him take the reins on it. We were in Europe this summer and got a Bialetti after. So I’ve been enjoying that, like the ritual of that.

The thing that I like in ritual is… I would love if I was someone who woke up, and meditated, and wrote my thoughts down… but what kind of grounds me is ritualistic action of making coffee or tea in the morning. I always drink herbal tea before I have coffee in the morning. I just feel like I should; I just know in my body that needs to happen in the morning.

I try not to read in the morning because I know I’ll get lost in my book and be late to the studio. So I do the crossword. It tickles my brain in the same way a book does.

I try to sit down every once in a while and write out a production schedule. I work on commission, so I basically go in and work on what has to get done. I set myself up for the day. I usually clean up a little bit in the morning, at the end of the day I can’t even fathom it because the work is very physical.

And then I’ll just get started. Depending on the work, I can work on one piece the whole day. If I’m making sconces, I can make two in a day. I keep music on.

I’ll listen to a book, or just listen to anything.

I really should. I recently put the Challengers soundtrack on. It’s great. I wish they cut the dialogue out of the score, because it’s so good. Very high tempo. The other day, I had to ship a bunch of things, which is very tedious, and I just cranked it out with that soundtrack. Lately, I’ve been having a Paul Simon resurgence kind of moment. There’s a reason it’s happening… I was just listening to Paul Simon and Joni Mitchel. The doors were open, I had a cross-breeze coming through. It feels like that time of year. Something's in the air.

I think there’s two ways for me to answer that. I feel like I need to work with my hands. And I think on a personal level, it has always been as simple as that.

On a more outward level, I think it is about making beautiful things. Sometimes in the world we live in now, I get a little bit bogged down by that; sometimes thinking, “What’s the point?” But I do feel like making things that are pleasing to people is a very calming thing to do. And I think it brings a lot of unfettered joy to people — or I hope it does! But that is the point of owning art and beautiful things. I chose to work more in design because you’re obviously buying the work because it’s beautiful. Whereas, when I worked in art… there was a Catherine Opie piece in the office — a very prolific photographer, who makes very serious, emotional work. It’s even trite for me to position it that way. And sales reps would come in, and the client would be like “I don’t think these are the right colors for above the couch.” And I’d be thinking “Are you fucking kidding me!” Because her work is very profound — and matching the couch is what you’re thinking about?

There’s so much meaning that can be derived after the fact of the overt exchange of getting a piece of art. The fact that my work is functional feels simply useful. A poetry professor at Bard really instilled in me that content arises out of form. Focusing on the form of what you’re writing can lead to the meaning — through that process. I think that’s something I’ve really brought into my practice. My work is incredibly meaningful to me. I don’t feel the need to beat anyone over the head with that. I’m content with people buying something just because they think it’s beautiful. It can have more meaning outside of that. But that’s sort of enough for me.