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February 18, 2021
BOUND, 2020 by Kassandra Thatcher. Photo: Courtesy of Kassandra Thatcher Studio


Creative Humans: Say hello to Kassandra Thatcher Studio.


By Meggie Sullivan.

The Humanist invites Kassandra Thatcher into the fold. An LA- and NY-based sculptor and artist, Thatcher creates timeless and elegant pieces, with an athleticism to them, that can instantly transform any space they inhabit.

Kassandra’s signature style is a personification of her other practices and talents: movement and language. Before her practice launched, Kassandra was a disciplined dancer, studied poetry at Bard College, and landed a career in the artworld doing communications and marketing. But she soon realized she wanted to contribute to the industry on her own terms, working with her hands to bring her envisioned forms to life. Since then, she has collaborated with the likes of Kelly Behun Studio and Ingrao and is also featured within Fourth St Home, Spartan Shop and Mary MacGill.

Take note: Kassandra tells us that she isn’t distracted by trends and what’s “hot right now.” She doesn’t look at competitors for influence or inspiration. Her work is informed by her own introspection and an imagined spatial context of her pieces. Like us, she believes that “objects, form, and light” can “inform how we live.”

Here at Hello Human, we’re excited to be working with Thatcher to help share news about her upcoming lighting collection, which reflects a year-long rumination on curvatures and connection of the physical body. But first, we’ll dig into the how, why and inspirations behind her practice. Read on to get to know Kassandra Thatcher.


Designer and artist, Kassandra Thatcher with one of her ceramic lamps.  Photo: Courtesy of Kassandra Thatcher Studio.




Name

Kassandra Thatcher


Company Founded

2018 


Location

Los Angeles, CA and New York City, NY. 


Website

https://www.kassandrathatcher.com/

Company Profile

Kassandra Thatcher is an artist and designer working with clay as her primary material. Her grounding focus on how bodies move against, between, beside, away from, toward, under, over other bodies, objects, and light, propels her work into a space she calls “static gesture.”

Her practice is made up of two bodies of work: Sculptural lighting and non-functional sculptural works. The former is a core collection of table lamps, floor lamps and sconces — with seasonal additions. The latter is an on-going experiment in improvisational sculpture, born out of the teachings of biomorphic & expressionist artists before her.

The basin for her creative practice is spatial relations; the relationship between spaces and everything else — time, volume, light, shadow and body.





Kassandra Thatcher’s OBLONG LOOP lamps. Photo: Courtsey of Kassandra Thatcher Studio. 
What makes you get up and design every morning?
It’s a primal instinct for me -- to create. I feel an incessant need when I wake up each day to work with my hands and build form. I am completely infatuated with space, how space is taken up and perceived, how it moves. I don’t really think about design while I’m creating, which I’ve always seen as an important part of how I exist in that world. First and foremost what I create is about the process of creating. Adding the context of the world of design comes later.

In college I was a poetry major and something that I’ve carried with me from that practice was a taxonomy from my mentor Ann Lauterbach: content is the result of a convergence with form and subject matter; meaning comes at the interaction with this equation. I say this because for me that has always been a necessary formula for art in the design world. It can be interpreted in many ways outside of poetry, but for me it’s been that the use of the object is the result of the playing and merging of form and subject.


Is it the problem or the solution that fuels your design practice?
        I’m not sure it’s decisively one or the other. 
The problem fuels the momentary creative space I exist in while making, but the aroma of solution I think acts really as a catalyst for how I move through the difficult spaces that I come to when working through a design.
  

What’s your spirit material? 
Clay, the obvious one. But also paper. I feel very deeply connected to how paper is illuminated by light.


A design/art/architecture project that you always return to for inspiration?
Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel time and time again. The windows, the light, the bending and sloping and curving and curling walls. Churches in general really. The creation of a container of space that mimics and facilitates in its use. 


Three words that describe your practice
Sensual, expansive, spatial.


What does the future of design look like to you?
I could wax poetic about what I think it should look like, but the reality is that I can’t foresee (especially after the year that we have had) what the future of any world will be. 


How do you use design for good?
My place in design came out of a desire to make work that was more accessible -- and by that I mean, coming from working in the NY gallery scene, accessible to those outside of a boundless monetary bracket. Adding functionality to my sculptural work allows folks who admire art to feel more confident investing in things they love, instead of existing on the fringe where the work can only be lusted after. So, distilled, I think the good is in contributing, if only just a bit, to people feeling good in the lived environments they create for themselves.





From left to right: PONCET, BATHER, and PIN DRIP; 2020 works from Kassandra Thatcher.
Photos: Courtesy of Kassandra Thatcher Studio.