Artistic ceramicware is all the rage in New York, and Kassandra Thatcher is one of a group of young artisans who is getting raves for their ceramic decorative items and sculptures. In person, she is open and friendly, with a distinctively tomboyish style, wearing a "Crosing Lines Keith Hering & Jean Michel Basquiat" T-shrit.
A life with clay
“I don’t dress very feminine,” she says. “I’m always in jeans or a buttondown, and I have so many pairs of pants. When I work, I wear painter pants a lot. And I wear white a lot, because the clay I work with dries white. On dark clothes, it shows up too much.”
Thatcher has worked with clay her whole life, ever since she was in preschool.“ It was always an outlet for me to focus my creative attention,” she says. However, it was not until she graduated from college and started working at a gallery that she took her passion more seriously. She joined a membership studio to hone her own ceramic practice and, about a year ago, started her career as a professional ceramic artist.Thatcher says that she is inspired by the body and its movement. Inside her studio are numerous works in progress that appear to be modeled on the female body.
Thatcher says that she is inspired by the body and its movement. Inside her studio are numerous works in progress that appear to be modeled on the female body. “I grew up as a dancer,” she explains. “Gesture is really important to me. Even when writing poetry in college, I wanted to find movement and gesture through writing—how something moves and creates a sentence. For a while, I wasn’t sure what was driving my fascination with the body and movement, but as I started to think about it, I realized it was because that was the language I learned to communicate with.” Thatcher considers it important to be able to use one’s language to communicate and connect with others. When asked what the most essential thing in her life is, she replies: empathy.
Thatcher grew up in Manhattan in a progressive environment that allowed her to befriend drag queens and other counterculture figures from a young age, experiences that helped her embrace who they were without prejudice. To her, expressing one’s self is as natural as breathing. Meanwhile, her choice of medium was influenced by her graphic designer parents, who taught her the power of visual communication.
“Take photojournalism,” she says. “The photos are the easiest way for us to connect. They make the biggest waves, because it’s visual; there’s a story behind what you’re looking at. We might be looking at it differently, but what we’re looking at is in front of us and tangible. And that creates a dialogue that allows you to learn where other people come from, both from an artistic background and from a historical, familial background.”
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.
PROFILE
Kassandra Thatcher | Born in New York, Thatcher is a ceramic sculptor working out of Brooklyn. Currently, she is working on functional decorative objects that can make sculpture more accessible to the public. She says she once traveled to Kyoto to visit the home of early 20th century Japanese potter Kanjiro Kawai. “I love his ethos about pottery and ceramics,” she says. “With Japanese artists, everything is thoughtful—not just the visual, but also the production.” Instagram@kassandraaaa
