Story & Lesson Highlights with Leah Bassett of Melbourne, Florida

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Leah Bassett. Check out our conversation below.

Hi Leah, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What is a normal day like for you right now?
A normal day for me right now is literally living and breathing my art studio and gallery! I acquired an art studio last year and that has been a humongous adventure in itself and now as of two months ago I’ve expanded the space into a gallery next door where I showcase my favorite local artists! I just soft opened the first show, Kinky Creepy yesterday for Florida’s Pride Festival. The art serendipitously manifested a magnificent theme of nudes, skulls, snakes and shibari so it will be running through Halloween now! All of this happened so fast and wasn’t planned but I’m loving what’s happening!

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hello! My name is Leah Sarrah Bassett and I’m a multi faceted visual and performance artist with strong roots in both coasts. I have many backgrounds in the arts since childhood. I studied music, musical theater, and fine arts. I have been a celebrity makeup artist in the industry for 20+years, and visual artist predominantly oil painting since my teens.
I am now in the middle of a wonderful eclectic passion mission to bring everything I love into one place with my partner. In Melbourne, Florida. Along side my art studio, we have opened up a gallery that I invited my favorite local artists to show with me. We also renovated the space and built a stage to showcase local talents including ourselves in comedy shows, burlesque, cabaret, live music, performance acts, spoken word and poetry, etc.
I cannot tell you how hard we’ve been working, flying by the seat of our pants, openly collaborating with others to bring much needed gorgeous arts and entertainment to the community!

Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I’m not quite certain but I had many glimpses of it in my dreams and in childhood memories. I knew for a fact that I could fly and do absolutely anything! I also knew mermaids and had some blue friends. I’m coming back to her moreso than ever in recent years!

When you were sad or scared as a child, what helped?
I had a pretty tumultuous childhood full of abuse and fear. My parents hated each other, tried to kill each other but they were also both incredible artists. It never deterred me from creating! I dove right in to drawing and painting, but instead of landscapes and animals like they painted, I chose people. I grew up with Stockholm’s Syndrome, always searching for the beauty and good in people. When we finally escaped my father in the middle of the night, the next few years were of exponential growth in the arts! It was a place where I could document my dreams and explore these worlds and myself.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
My closest, best friends have told me I take relationships way too seriously. My best friend and former roommate of 10 years said I acted like I was married when I was in relationships. She said my relationship of 12 years was a glorified friends with benefits situationship and she totally wasn’t wrong! It was refreshing to hear and sometimes I wish I heard that opinion much earlier on! I am very committed when I’m in a relationship and do take it seriously at every level except I don’t want to get married and involve the government. My childhood traumas of divorce and observations of relationships had a major impact on mine throughout my life. It’s hard enough for me to untangle myself from a relationship, let alone get the government involved. Ha!

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. If immortality were real, what would you build?
I’m pretty sure immortality is real and I’m still working on deprogramming myself, ha ha! I’m gonna keep intuitively working with my world of creatives! I would love to keep connecting with artists and helping people express themselves more freely through the love that comes through art! I love transmuting pain into beauty, healing through art!

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Image Credits
I took the photos 🙂

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