Featuring Cassandra Klos
Sunday, August 16 | 8:00–11:00 a.m. Breakfast | 11:00 a.m. Conversation
BigTown Vermont
105 North Main Street, Rochester, Vermont
On most weekends, Rochester's Community Pop-Up Café welcomes visitors from the porch of the Rochester Café, offering breakfast and conversation while the town's two breakfast and lunch restaurants remain temporarily closed. Created by local volunteers, the Pop-Up has become a welcoming gathering place for neighbors and travelers alike.
For this special Sunday, the Pop-Up moves to the gardens at BigTown Vermont, where breakfast will be served from our wood-fired oven from 8:00–11:00 a.m. Join us for breakfast, linger in the gardens, and stay for In Conversation at 11:00 a.m. with photographer, artist, curator, and educator Cassandra Klos.
We imagine The Sunday Commons as a place where good food, thoughtful conversation, and community naturally come together. It is an invitation to slow down, meet someone new, share ideas, and spend a Sunday morning nourished in every sense of the word.
We are delighted to welcome Cassandra back to Rochester. She first came to BigTown Vermont in 2024 to co-create, with Jim Dow and BigTown Gallery, the My Place Photography Workshop, returning in 2025 to lead a second session. Through these workshops, Cassandra has helped participants discover how photography can deepen our understanding of place, memory, and community. Her generosity as a teacher and collaborator has left a lasting impression on our region, making it a pleasure to continue the conversation with her.
Based in Boston, Cassandra Klos is an internationally recognized photographer, artist, and curator whose work explores the intersections of science, technology, the environment, and the human imagination. With a passion for science fiction and environmental storytelling, she has developed an unexpected parallel career as an analog astronaut, participating in five simulated space missions that investigate what it means to live, work, and create in extreme environments.
From 2015–2017, Cassandra served as Artist-in-Residence at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, where she later commanded the first all-artist crew during Mission 181. She has since served as crew journalist for the Selene II mission in Hawaiʻi, commanded the inaugural mission at the Space Analog for Moon/Mars Habitat in Arizona—designed to advance accessibility in space exploration—and, most recently, served as Executive Officer for Nivalis, the first all-female simulated lunar mission at the Lunares Research Station in Piła, Poland. Since 2023, she has also been a NASA Solar System Ambassador, sharing the excitement of space exploration with communities across the country.
Cassandra earned her MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University and her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Cassilhaus Collection and Gallery, as well as exhibitions at the Copenhagen Photography Festival, the Biennale Festival of Photography, and the Lagos Photography Festival.
Her work has received numerous honors, including the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography, the United States Emerging Photographer Award from the Magenta Foundation, and a Traveling Fellowship Grant from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She has been a Critical Mass finalist, and her editorial and commercial clients include National Geographic, The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME, Smithsonian Magazine, The Economist, MIT Technology Review, Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, and many others.
Please join us for a Sunday morning that begins around the breakfast table and continues in conversation—exploring photography as a way of seeing, Cassandra's experiences creating art in simulated space habitats around the world, and the enduring importance of place, from imagined worlds millions of miles away to the landscapes and communities we call home.