Daily Inspiration: Meet Cassandra Lee Hamilton

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cassandra Lee Hamilton.

Hi Cassandra lee, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I inadvertently combined this question with the one after, hope that’s okay!

I grew up in the Hollywood hills in a house made by a sandcastle winner. When the 94’ earthquake hit the house started slipping down the mountain.

When I was young I deeply related to the movie ‘Slums of Beverly Hills’. Humor in times of abject despair became an ethos. a super power.

By 17 I was a high school dropout. Total Troubled youth. My dad suggested I moved to London on my own to work for a friend of his. It’s like we dumped kerosene all over everything.

The company was called Big Life management, I was sent around England to film the bands they managed like Gang of Four, Futureheads, snow patrol, the Klaxons and other nu raving lunatics.

Looking back what shithead teenager has it all together? after a few years i came back from London with a little bit of a drinking problem. I spent the next few trying to navigate my relationship with drugs and alcohol in the midst of assembling a directors reel. It wasn’t going well.

Finally I did something right and I moved to Austin Texas, my true blue. Summer camp lasted for years, riding my bike, collecting records, making mixtapes. I joined a band called the Cowabunga Babes and then later a band called The Vomettes. We opened for bands like the Vaselines and Shonen knife. Burger Records even put out our cassettes. it was perfect, so perfect that it makes you want to puke.

Nothing last forever.
I found myself back in LA where the Internet involved me in a massive conspiracy that ultimately tipped the scales dooming our country forever.
(PizzaGate)*
*I made a video for a band that had previously played the infamous pizza parlor. they had a controversial name, men with eyeliner and people of color. I should’ve seen it coming. The Internet is terrifying and racist and very dumb and it broke me watching an army of little alex jones trolls use a piece of my art as tool for their agenda. “Great can I get the check please? Thanks”

That’s when I started making art for people who thought it was the end of the world and felt totally fine about it.
I called it BummedAF
I would draw hundreds of these little black and metallic tombstones, each carved with their own sardonic thought. I’d bring them to shows, hiding them around, giving them out to everyone I knew. I heard Jimmy Page even has one. It was cathartic every time someone related to a grave I made. It felt nice to know I wasn’t alone.
Cue thunder and Covid and lightning.

And then we were all alone.
That’s when I learned that I love to build things. I love to work with Wood and with metal. I love to bolt things to cement like lights in alley ways so women can walk safely at night. I started a community garden and surrounded it with murals. I found peace. It was okay.

Since then I started playing music in a couple bands like Shimmer Bed and GangStalking. I’m on tour doing merch for the band Flipper now, they were one of Kurt Cobain’s favorites.

The truth is though, the thing I really care about working on is fusing all these tangents and detours and rogue moments, bizarre loves, uncomfortable life stuff, smashing all of the weird pieces of me together in some sort of cathartic mind meld because something pretty wild has been happening, art comes out that doesn’t feel like anything else. It’s personal and earnest, totally unruly and weird AF.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m an artist. It comes out in different ways but it’s all the same thing to me. I love film making and telling stories just as much as I love playing music and expressing feeling through tone. I like combining illustration with humor in a punk sort of way. I haven’t made the thing I’m most proud of yet but I think I’m working on it right now.

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
Read everything Kandinsky wrote on art and then burn it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.cassandraleehamilton.com
• Instagram: @bummedAF
• Other: @GangStalking.Ctrl