The air was warm and the room a dewy yellow. 

The needle of the record player sang static. The stylus was lifted as a new vinyl plopped onto the turntable. 

The sounds of four male voices filled the room and the ears of young Isis Lee, who sat crisscrossed at age 5 in the Rio Grande Valley.

“Everything in my life was in black and white before I heard The Beatles,” Lee explained. 

“It was my first time listening to music and when I heard The Beatles, my life went into color…I didn't speak English yet. I didn't understand what they were singing, but I could see everything. I've never let language keep me from listening.”

It’s a Survival Thing 

Isis Lee and her family were born in Guadalajara, Mexico. They immigrated to the Rio Grande Valley when she was 5 years old. Her father was born in 1918, while her mother was born in 1964. Lee said their age gap provided her multiple perspectives on life.  

“Everything that my father would talk about, worldly, I got to experience as a child,” Lee recalled. “Despite where we were at, I knew that there was this bigger world, not just this thing. And so I've always been pushing myself creatively.”

Lee is a 41-year-old Renaissance woman living in Austin, pulling together her different forms of expression to support others and driven by her strong social conscience. She is a performer and artist around the city while pursuing another bachelor’s degree and aiming for a seat in the Texas Legislature to aid women’s rights, indigenous rights and immigration laws. 

“The idea of being a traditional woman, in the sense of where my culture comes from, that's not enough for me,” Lee said. “I want to push the bar, I want to raise the bar and I want to change the circumstances.”

The connection to art provided Lee her place in the world, she said, especially developing a sense of self in a childhood filled with moving from home to home.

“For me, it’s a survival thing…I was bit by the bug in the uterus,” Lee said, laughing. 

Her mother dropped out of school in third grade and joined the circus, where she would meet Lee’s father. 

He was a flying trapeze artist with the Circo Ayala, a group his family still runs to this day. Lee’s mother was a Ringling Bros. circus performer where she was a member of the Verdu Sisters. Their act was the rolling globe, balancing atop a large ball. 

Each was successful, inducted into the Ringling Hall of Fame, and they took Lee along for their traveling adventures. 

“I was really lucky because we never stayed in one place too long…I always had to adapt. Yeah, learning to adapt was very difficult all the time, but at the same time it gave me the necessary strength inside myself to pursue every challenge and not succumb to whatever was holding (me) back,” Lee said, staring off into the window that lit up her bare face and soft, bleached eyebrows. 

She ran her fingers through her blond, pixie cut. The cursive words Naturally Beautiful inked into the skin of her forearm exposed. 

Lee smiled and reminisced about the imaginary friends she took all over the world.

“I was always creative,” Lee said. “My parents would be like, ‘You're sitting in timeout,’ and I'd be like timeouts are great because I can meditate and go out of body. I was like this weirdo little kid. I was really fortunate that my mom was kind of the weirdo and my dad was kind of the straight-laced guy.” 

Through each parent, Lee learned how to feel free and have fun coupled with her desire for accomplishment. She felt a good mental balance when learning how to navigate the world, growing into a person who always finishes what she starts. 

Lee’s parents decided to leave the Valley and moved to Florence, Italy when she was in high school. This time, Lee did not join the “adventure.”

They left to find better healthcare. Lee’s father had cancer. Unfortunately, the medical coverage in Europe, at the time, wasn’t any better than in the U.S.

The cancer turned terminal and Lee’s father had a dying wish to be closer to his youngest daughter, Annette, living in Waco. Without a second thought, the family moved back. 

“What brought me to Central Texas was, you know, cancer,” Lee shrugged, looking down at her folded hands. 

The day she watched her father take his final breath, the humid heat sat heavier. 

“That milestone right there, it changed me,” Lee shared. “I was pretty much broken and I knew I had to change something. I got tired of being angry, I got tired of being depressed. I hit my breaking point. Instead of shattering, I decided to start growing and go back to school.”

Riot Grrrl

Lee is a musician, poet, photographer, performer, model, feminist, and aspiring activist. 

Lee graduated from online university this spring with two degrees in women’s and gender studies, as well as psychology. These will accompany her music degree from her studies in Waco.

Getting her foot back into academia helped Lee organize her thoughts and make plans, like starting the Waco Poets Society. 

She found ways to create and collaborate with other creatives when living in Waco, but said there was a missing piece. Lee searched, trying to find the faces of her Aztec and Yaki ancestors. 

Lee performing at Kick Butt Coffee

“I did not have any representation,” Lee said, looking straight on. “I was the odd duck out and I did not fit in.”

Lee coped in the way she knows best — creating art. 

 “I started to put my music out. The Music Association of Central Texas nominated me for Female Vocalist of the Year and I was like this is real because I'm in Central Texas, where people were like, ‘Where the hell did you come from? You have to be country or Texarkana rock,’” Lee said.

The expectations of the people around Lee fueled her sense of oddity but motivated her to spread her wings, she said.

Lee formed an indie band in 2018 called FingerJane.The group of four began fusing soul with reggae and almost instantly booked gigs in Austin.

Soon after, Lee realized her next step was moving to Austin, and she's been here for five years now. 

When Lee first got here, she gravitated to the diverse groups of local artists, like the burlesque community, small bands, the feministas, and the queer community. 

Lee met her roommate, Marissa Grace Johnson, at Gender Unbound Art Fest in 2019. When they first met they talked for hours.

“We immediately clicked…She's been like family to me. I see her as an advocate for the LGBTQ community, which I'm a part of, I see it in her performances and just her general demeanor,” Johnson said.

When Lee grew up in the 90s, she identified as a riot grrrl — uniting feminism with punk and addressing topics like the patriarchy, sexual abuse, classism, and female empowerment. 

“We were going to be loud and in your face and maybe we're going to use shock. Whatever we have to do to get your attention. So for a long time, I had this idea of like being in your face, and I've learned how to shift my voice,” Lee said.

Upcoming is Uphill

When Lee was a little girl her father picked up a saw and started to bend it. She remembers it so clearly when the tool began to make music. 

“There's not one way to be an artist. I’m doing a tap dancing thing, I don't even know how to tap dance, but I got this piece of wood and put salt on it because I wanted to hear the sounds,” Lee said, replicating the crunching chh chh chh.

When she wasn’t studying, some of her free time was spent brainstorming concepts for FingerJane’s upcoming album. 

The rest of Lee’s spare moments are for her 365-day challenge of creating a piece of art every day, like spoken word, song lyrics, burlesque choreography and costume designs for her and her husband, Tyler Robbins. Robbins is also a performer and received a bachelor’s degree in audio engineering this spring.

At times Lee has felt pushback from her extended family, she shared. They ask when she will have children and wonder why she is “wasting her life.”

Fernando Ortiz, a close friend of Lee’s, said her self-awareness and determination are what he appreciates about her the most.

“Through her poetry and music she pushes others to be stronger and more creative in life,” Ortiz said. “Isis can’t be stopped. She has an extreme talent in the arts and wants the world to see it. And it does see her.”

Ortiz has watched Lee spew out an idea, create a goal and accomplish it with huge results, he explained.

“I don't think that there is one way of doing anything,” as Lee said as she exhaled. “I feel that my biggest challenge is to just stay open minded, but I also have so much ease in that, like I never feel uncomfortable. There's a sense of dignity that I think comes from this culture of being indigenous…there's this ancient memory of strength that is in me.”