One Thing Better with Lia Kass

One Thing Better is a weekly series featuring some cool creator I’ve stumbled across, in a one-question interview format.

It’s a simple premise. Each week someone answers The Question.

One thing I’ve been doing lately that makes my life better is swimming my brains out. 

It was a habit most of my adult life until I lost the option due to shoulder injury.  Recently, for the first time since ’07 I’ve been able to swim for miles again. 

Equally wonderful, said shoulder is reliable for work. For 9 years I often lost use of my right arm entirely.  All endeavors were fearfully & tenuously undertaken & many jobs forfeited. 

Powering through water is a seductive luxury that both exhilarates & relaxes me. Working on a large glass design with a working shoulder feels like cheating. 

My swims breath a little extra light into everything.

I bumped into Lia Kass and her partner outside a roadtel in Nevada this past summer while art trekking around America. 

(A roadtel is a cheap roadside motel, hired for one function only: a bed and a bathroom at a good rate. Best to arrive late and leave early . . . 😉

I was in our art van with its collage of artwork wrapping around the entirety of the outer skin. One of Lia’s great attributes is her curiosity and her brio. We met because she wanted to see the inside of my van!

It turns out she’d lived out of a van when she was younger. An athletically attractive woman who lived for skiing in her early twenties and lived out of a van . . . that kind of daring demanded a longer conversation. 

They were travelling west; I was heading east. So I invited the two of them out for breakfast before we hit the road. 

Connections are often forged with a question. Lia’s question: To see the inside of my van. My question: How about breakfast?

I’m sure it helped that I was buying.

It turns out the place we went for breakfast — the best place in town according to the roadtel manager — was owned by a guy who also owned the local brothel. Though in my younger years I might have wanted to linger to sample the owner’s other offerings . . . that’s long ago. Now, a good connected conversation with lots of laughter, exploring what matters, is paramount.

What I recall best about Lia’s world is her utter fearlessness in living the life she wanted to live. Whether on the slopes or in the freedom from the 9-to-5 she gained by removing herself awhile from the housing market.

Most of us would be fearful for her. A young woman not safely locked away in a home each night. And yet despite the challenges van living brought she still looks back with relish on that time.

It only makes sense that someone who lived so adventurously in her twenties would find her way into the creative life. Lia is an artist who works in glass and in paint. One form can’t contain her!

Do yourself a favor and visit Lia’s artwork here.