Sister Kasia immigrated to America and landed in Brooklyn in the mid-1980s, living in a rent-stabilized tenement on Grand Avenue in Williamsburg, on the northern edge of the Polish neighborhood known locally as the North Side. Early on, we called her Poski Smok because she knew how to clear the decks and get things done. After all, getting things done was Sister Kasia’s habit, the other she literally wore, and, like a dragon, her habit was smoking.
At the same time, a growing population of bohemians and art types found Williamsburg and Greenpoint much to their liking. This was long before gentrification, when North Brooklyn was still a big, beautiful slum, and those bohemians, even if they were taking advantage of the very, very cheap rent, also respected and loved the neighborhood characters. They would not have dreamed of destroying the place, especially for the sake of making money. The atmosphere of old Williamsburg was that valuable. Cheap rent food and drinks and a bed of creativity
Still, as baby boomers, they were just as ambitious about consuming drugs and alcohol as they were about being known for what they did. They were, basically, the first hard-core bohemian wave in Williamsburg. They were definitely party people, but then again, at that time, who wasn’t? From Basquiat, gone by 1988, to Lou Reed, dead in 2013, this was a generation that dug drugs and alcohol and paid the price for it one way or another.
Always faithful to her mission, Sister Kasia witnessed it, but took no part in anything stupid while not openly commenting too much about it. Busy with her work, starting with whatever she could, i remember her selling beautiful caps to the local mob guys, me included. The hat was so sharp and so hip that when I showed it to my father around Christmas time, he assumed it was a present for him and simply took it. I only got it back after he died 17 years later.
In Poland, Sister Kasia was born into sewing, fabric, and fashion. But it was in Brooklyn that she found the place that could truly make use of her sensibilities, and in America where she found the freedom and opportunity to turn those gifts into something larger through cinema which focused her art into something often distinctly American. And what’s more American than an immigrant finding room to growin cinema?
Put a dragon in an open range like America and you get one of the best costume designers in America. Sometimes lazy, partying natives with bad habits take all that for granted.
Kasia came to America with nothing, her attire was literally her habit, as was smoking the like the smok she wa,s in those days of old funky Williamsburg days and nights.