For the Common Good: A Community Artist Interview with Kaleb Stevens
Kaleb showcasing a community mural made at Speak Your Peace in 2020. Photo credit: Kaleb Stevens.
I first saw Ames-based artist Kaleb Stevens (known artistically as KUB) perform back in early 2020 at the Black Arts and Music Festival at the Ames Public Library and immediately began following his work. We were officially connected by a colleague at Iowa State University where Kaleb is pursuing a degree in Community and Regional Planning, and since then, we’ve talked shop a few times about art and community and Iowa. In addition to being a full-time student, and an active community-driven artist, Kaleb also serves as the Planning and Engagement Coordinator for UnEvictIA, a placemaker for Des Moines-based Group Creatives Services, and was most recently an intern for the Center for Artistic Activism, an international organization providing training and support for artist activists. He was recently interviewed about his music on The McAllister Hours, a Des Moines-based podcast.
Needless to say, I was really excited when Kaleb agreed to be interviewed as part of For the Common Good. He knows a lot.
I present to you the wisdom and knowledge of Kaleb Stevens. Enjoy.
About Kaleb (in his words):
“Born and currently residing in the United States, Kaleb Stevens is an artist and student at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa studying Community and Regional Planning. In 2017 he began co-producing community cultural events and artistic experiences in central Iowa, and since has co-produced or performed in nearly 50 cultural experiences in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri including concerts, poetry exhibitions, and a temporary sculpture installation. In 2017 he formed the ad hoc creative agency Lonely Grave LLC and began collaborating with young designers and artists to provide artistic and culturally stimulating events in central Iowa, supporting artists to display their forms of self expression for the benefit of the greater community.
He seeks to challenge systemic oppression with the commutative properties of artistic expression and believes that art plays a crucial role in establishing socially equitable frameworks by amplifying the collective voice of people belonging to oppressed communities. In 2020 Kaleb co-produced Speak Your Peace, an outdoor space activation in Ames, Iowa where unheard Black voices in the community were given space to speak and be heard. In 2020 Kaleb was a featured artist in the Outrage to Change exhibit created to amplify the voice of Black artists in central Iowa as well as producer of the Dream Cube, a collaborative modular art installation created in connection with the Iowa Youth Homeless Center and organized by Bravo Greater Des Moines in an effort to amplify the needs of youth experiencing homelessness in Polk county, Iowa.
Kaleb values learning human insights from the artists he has the fortune of collaborating with and has a passion for supporting storytellers to build and connect with communities. He finds that encouraging artistic expression in people who do not consider themselves to be artists is one of the most rewarding experiences, and as such he hopes that the projects and events that he helps to plan reflect the viewers and their communities as much as they amplify the artist(s) involved.”
Kaleb produced a short video documenting Speak Your Peace in 2020. You can view the original video on his website, along with many others.
Who are you in 10 words?
I would say curious. I would say I’m also inquisitive. There's enough distinction between those two. I'm someone who likes to live passionately. I'll say emotional or sensitive, I guess, kind of an interplay there, which is super broad, but just going for categories. Human. I'd say small in the grand scheme of things. Really hopeful. Definitely, a very hopeful person.
Do you have creative rituals, and what are they?
I think my biggest creative ritual is procrastination. It would probably be my number one. I think that I use it to give myself extra pockets of time to open up the possibility of thinking of something different. But I think maybe procrastination's also the perspective of what you're supposed to be doing. I think that there's a lot of friction when it comes to being a [creative] person and being a person who's paying their bills and part of society. There's a lot of missteps that I think from the outside looks like procrastination. Might just be a person taking their time with something. So maybe patience. I open up to patience. I think would be a ritual as I do this every time.
And for me, I've always been more active at night. When I'm feeling really creative, I like staying up late and just free writing something, telling a story to myself or something like that.
Kaleb in front of his Outrage to Change installation, downtown Ames, Iowa, 2020. Photo credit: Kaleb Stevens.
What community rituals do you value?
Recently, but also going back, I've always been really close with my cousins - they still live here in town. I would say my biggest ritual is just being able to have some time to go over there, hang out, talk about life. They're all a few years to quite a few years younger than me. So it's like, "How was high school? How was your day?” They skateboard a lot. I guess I go there to see what the youth are up to.
Obviously, I love events and being able to see somebody strike up a conversation at our show or at a cookout. Those are the best. Other than that, I would say just eating food in general. I usually do that with community. Or when it's done in community, for sure, it definitely tastes lot better.
I would also say that creating space in community is much more like a plant growing than turning a robot on for the first time. I think that it's cool to have something that’s the work of a lot of people for the benefit of more people- it leads to connections that lead to life happening. I think everyone is experimenting in a specific type of community. What if we threw all this together? What would happen from that? It's been cool to be in school and learn some of the research about community, - how we perceive it and how we structure it.
Artist Kub Stevens and participants from the Youth Action Council and IHYC made the Dream Cube to increase awareness of youth homelessness in Polk County. Video credit: Group Creatives Services.
How do you merge that creative work with your community work?
I'll use the Dream Cube as an example of having more of the community focus. I think that when you actually look at communities, and specifically different types of marginalized communities, and you see what they're up against - what they need to have fair footing or to have access to health care or access to justice, access to equity, you have to get creative. And if we look at a lot of creativity and creative sectors here in the US, we see a lot of expression from marginalized communities who have turned many things they go through into thinking about a problem a new way, or finding different types of innovations in different fields.
With the Dream Cube, specifically, I think that the call for proposals sought something that would bring light to what youth experiencing homelessness go through. When I was working with the kids who were experiencing homelessness or kids who had experienced homelessness, they had solutions to everything.
There were so many logistics II wasn't fully prepared for - like 230 pillows that we were trying to keep track of, as well as a team of five or six people in addition to myself. So it was more project management than I had done before. And I really had to rely on the expertise that was already coming in, really understand people's learned knowledge, things that they that get just through life experience and especially through experience in a specific location. And I really leaned on that.
So I would say collaboration is just being around the right people. Group Creatives had the call out for the artists and Bravo Greater Des Moines was funding it. And then the young men who were there at the Iowa Homeless Youth Center were all able to help make that thing possible.
Kaleb and Dream Cube collaborators, Des Moines, 2020. Photo Credit: Kaleb Stevens.
Has your creative work changed since the pandemic started?
That's a good question. Not really. I think a lot of the stuff I did was already inside-based. Obviously, we stopped putting events together as that was something we were doing kind of consistently. But I've definitely still been busy with putting other types of things together and learning more. Still recording music, that's all indoors. I have enough stuff that I work on by myself that being isolated for a while hasn't been bad. It's actually been a chance to regroup and process and get on a good direction as we do hopefully come out of this someday or reverse climate change someday or something crazy like that.
What's been your hardest community lesson over the years?
The hardest lesson, I'll bring it back to the Dream Cube again. There was definitely a point where once it got to the end, I realized how I'd been disorganized up to that point, and I was just juggling too much, keeping too many balls in the air at that point. And so it was never a major fall or anything like that, but I felt like I was so focused on things that I hadn't written down that I wasn't able to be quite as present as I would have liked to have been. So it was definitely a lesson in coming in with a structure of the project you want to do and having those document-based resources ready, as well as planning it out, and making the process clear. This would have saved me a lot of headache, but it was it was cool nonetheless, to know what I need for next time when I'm in a position like that. Get organized would be the biggest lesson.
What's been the most fulfilling community moment?
I would say the last day of the Dream Cube installation. I'd say that was the most impactful, but it was also sad seeing how small the cube of pillows became. Just seeing how much it had shrunk by the third day because of how many pillows we gave away to people who needed them. It's what people needed, and it's something that improved their situation in a tiny, tiny way. And it was eye-opening more to the need, I think, of just what people are going through to prevent them from even having time to think about doing an art project. They're dealing with real-life issues, and so it was seeing that intersection of when art is active in the community and how it reflects the community and the community reflects it and vice versa. Because we started out with however many pillows and it was like 100 or 150 less. It was a lot. And so, we had statistics in a way, too, of the need. Literally, I'm looking at it research-wise. There are a lot of people looking for comfort, looking for material things that can help to bring that comfort about.
Dream Cube installation, Des Moines, Iowa. 2020. Photo Credit: Kaleb Stevens.
And that's the thing. Giving away pillow was not part of the original plan because I didn't want to offer people pillows that had just been exposed to the elements. We were just carrying them in a U-Haul truck. And people start asking for them. And I'm not going to tell them no. People are just trying to find shelter. That's what I think about now.
And that leads into what I'm doing right now with Amal Barre and UnevictIA. It's been really, really cool being linked up with her. Amal's a planner as well. She clearly has her heart on bringing to light the things that this eviction data can tell us since we're one of the first projects to track this data. It’s crazy to see the need growing right before my eyes as I'm going through pages and pages of evictions, people who had to find a new place. And definitely, the first step towards solving the problem is acknowledging the problem and seeing what the problem looks like. So it's cool to be a part of that and be able to use art, creative thinking specifically, in an upcoming exhibition and documentary to tell that story.
Image courtesy of UnevictIA.
So what tips do you have for artists who want to dip their toe into community-driven work?
I think a lot of art is already in community, whether it's officially that or whether it looks like a project that's helping a lot of people, or something that is situated in the community and shapes the community just by its existence.
So I would say, first off, you just have show what you do because that creates community right there, that creates conversations. It can be hard and it's not always the right time. But if you do want to be involved with other people and build community, you at least have to show what you're doing, even if it's not an interface, you have to take a picture, share a picture, a video, or a manifesto or something.
From there, be open to dialogue. I think that's a way to help. If people want to ask you about your art, just be able to tell them what you believe in, what you want to do with your art, Then you're able to start aligning with like-minded people or people with similar goals, and you can find who your community already is. I think the biggest thing about community is that it's not made, but it is grown. It's organic. It's a living, breathing thing because it's made up of people. So understanding that your community is already there, and the hard part is just finding it. But once you find it, I think when you're inspired, that's when you know what what you need to do for the community. It's really finding your people by showing who you are and expressing yourself in your art.
prod. Poetics
video by Elive Productions
Contact: kub@lonelygrave.com
Instagram: officialkub7
Facebook: @kubstevens7
Do you have ideas, especially since you're a planner, of how communities can better support artists?
Definitely. I've been learning about this in my work with Teva Dawson of Group Creatives. I've been researching cultural districts recently, and there are a lot of formal ways that communities can support artists is by deciding to create a cultural district or to create an area that's dedicated to arts, dedicated to local culture. There's a bunch of examples of places using a percent-for-public-art program, a percentage of big construction projects funds the arts. Those type of things put direct financing to artists. Or just providing grants for artists to cover materials or to fund new projects. Financial support is the first step that definitely packs the most punch and can help to stimulate the arts and make artists the most sustainable. After that, I would say lifting up the arts, showcasing the arts, and working the arts into the fabric of what a place is, the way a place is marketed, and the way it’s sold to visitors or would-be visitors. Creating events or just putting art events on a citywide email is a small thing to create space for artists.
Financial funding and lifting of the arts are definitely the two big steps a community can take if they value the arts and artists and want to see more vibrant arts in the community. I think that any community where art's able to thrive is a stronger and healthier community, in terms of finances and physical health studies and a lot of different metrics. And I think that if you're in a position financially and time-wise where you can afford to sit down and paint something or work on a project, these are signs that a community is doing better. I think that by providing space for people to have time or the space where they're able to really invest in themselves and create art, or even if they don’t identify as artists, that’s very rejuvenating. Especially if the city is directly providing that time or space, people can feel thankful to be able to be a part of that community.
Do you have a motto or creed that you live by?
If it's anything, I would definitely say it's just do onto others as you want them to do to you. Golden rule. I think that just comes with understanding that we're all just humans here. No matter what we accomplish or think that we accomplish, we're all just humans. We were born really small and we die at some point along the way, and we live life in the midst of that. And there doesn't need to be so much division in society, or so many “haves” or “have-nots” when we're all going through the same experience and the same difficulties and same celebrations. The golden rule is probably my closest thing to a motto
Where can we find you? What upcoming events should we know about?
Lonely Grave is the best place you can find me. That’s where I put some musings and share some art. Or Instagram, Facebook, there's KUB.
Photo credit: Kaleb Stevens Facebook page.
Like learning about the ins and outs of being a community artist or a community arts leader? Check out interviews with artists Akwi Nji, Catherine Reinhart, Jordan Brooks, Reinaldo Correa, Kristin M Roach, Rami Mannan, and Jill Wells, and interviews with community arts leaders Amber Danielson, Allison McGuire, Andy McGuire, and Jennifer Brockpahler.
Have a phenomenal community artist or an inspiring artist leader to suggest? Comment below or email jennifer@whatsgoodproject.com.