30 minute read
“Actively Ignored”: The Fight for Urban Farm
remain displaced as of 2014, according to reports from the United Nations.
As the current invasion continues, it’s not clear how many more Ukrainians will be displaced and evacuated. Oregonians with Slavic roots are fi nding ways to channel local and public support into aid that can be distributed to those still living in Ukraine. One of the most prominent ways is through fundraising, usually spearheaded by churches and humanitarian aid groups.
One of these churches is Living Word Adventist, a Russianspeaking Slavic church in Oregon City. Living Word’s pastor, Alex Paraschuk, and most of the church’s members have relatives living in Russia or Eastern Europe. When the invasion started, Paraschuk says, the church was in shock.
“We just called our friends and relatives at the churches there wanting to know what was going on,” Paraschuk says.
Food insecurity and damage to water, gas and electricity infrastructure continue to worsen for refugees. According to the United Nations Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aff airs, over 5.7 million people received emergency food assistance since February.
Living Word has raised more than $20,000 from members of the church and community members in Oregon since the invasion started. Paraschuk and Living Word’s administration correspond with church leaders currently living in Ukraine’s southwest region to use those raised funds to buy fuel, potatoes, eggs, bread and medical supplies. Paraschuk says that church groups in Odesa have also used Living Word’s donations to off er refugees a shower and access to electricity as they evacuate westward.
According to Paraschuk, the Ukrainian churches that Living Word has been corresponding with send small teams of volunteers to eastern Ukraine to evacuate families from their homes in Russian-occupied territory. Many of the pastors whom Paraschuk corresponds with have already evacuated westward to outposts in Odesa and Mykolaiv, but their congregations stay behind for fear of being shelled in transit.
According to fi ndings made by the UN’s Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, more than 12,000,000 people are estimated to have been displaced from their homes in Ukraine, and about 6.3 million have left the country altogether. Almost 3.5 million refugees have crossed the Western border to Poland, with the rest of the diaspora largely funneling into neighboring Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia.
Paraschuk described a recent mission Living Word helped fund: a pastor from Mykolaiv organized an evacuation plan where four volunteers from his church drove a minivan to Russian-occupied territory in Berdyansk and Melitopol to evacuate small groups of eight to 10 refugees at a time. The volunteers drove two to three times a week to occupied territory, fi lled the van up with as many people as possible and drove west towards Odesa, Dnipro, even as far as the Polish and Romanian borders.
Many who are able are choosing to fl ee their homes and travel west by car or truck, but the journey comes with risk. Russia’s occupation of eastern Ukraine makes traveling by road through militarized countryside extremely dangerous for civilians. Ukrainian refugees told CNN wartime correspondents in May 2022 that convoys of refugees fl eeing Eastern Ukraine are forced to navigate roadblocks and avoid Russian shelling and gunfi re, all while rationing food and medical supplies over the span of several days.
The funds raised by Living Word also go towards paying for gas for these evacuation trips as well as funding church-based refugee camps in Odesa and Dnipro. Paraschuk says that refugees, many of whom have gone without their personal belongings or showers for weeks, can stay at the camps and use the resources accumulated there as they make their way westward.
The Entire Pie Chart
Vlad Bilan is a third-year student at the University of Oregon and of Ukrainian descent. He was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, and lived there for two and a half years before his family moved to the U.S. Although he was born in Ukraine, Bilan says he’s “99.9% Americanized.”
Both of Bilan’s parents are in ministry. His dad was a pastor for 17 years but recently became a chaplain. His mom just dropped her chaplaincy to take up pastoring in the Gresham area outside of Portland. Most of the people who made up her congregation were Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovian. Bilan says he’s grateful to have grown up in this community and that it helped him and his sister maintain their knowledge of their own culture and language.
Bilan has an uncle in Portland, his grandma lives in an apartment on his parent’s property, and much of his mother’s family lives in North Carolina. Some of his family lives in or near recently Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine: Dnipro, Kyiv and Yevpatoriya, Crimea.
“Thankfully, everything is going okay with them,” Bilan says. “Recently, they’ve been spending a lot of time in the basements of their homes to stay safe.” As of the publication of this story, Bilan says he hasn’t heard any new updates on their situations.
Bilan says his great grandmother has been stubborn, unwilling to leave her house in Kyiv.
“She was like, ‘This is my house,’” Bilan says. “‘Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.’”
When the confl ict started in February 2022, Bilan says, his family experienced a dramatic upheaval of lifestyle. Bilan’s aunts
22 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022 Ukraine 22 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022
Ukraine
On the positive side of things and something I’m honored to be a part of is my family is trying to do a lot of diff erent fundraising programs or outreach programs.” Bilan and his family are trying to raise money to bring a group of 20 to 30 students who were displaced from Ukraine to Oregon to fi nish their education. “I’ve been super thankful to at least be able to help there,” Bilan says. “It eases that sense of like helplessness when you see the news or you read an article and you’re like ‘what can I do?’”
and uncles who are in Ukraine call his parents frequently now, updating them on the war’s progress and how they’re faring.
“If you have pie charts in your mind of things you think about day to day, it almost seems like their entire pie chart was taken up by everything happening in Ukraine,” Bilan says about his parents.
For Bilan, staying informed about the conflict has been a double-edged sword.
“You’re constantly checking in, and it’s just more bad news,” Bilan says. “It was constantly messing with my head.”
Bilan says he’s glad that the public is following along with the war in Ukraine and spreading awareness and support through social media, but he notices a difference in attention to this conflict compared to other conflicts.
“The people who are struggling in my family, this isn’t anything new to the families struggling in Syria or Palestine,” Bilan says. “Other people have been feeling this pain much longer and much harder than our country has.”
The World Health Organization’s emergency coordinator for the Ukrainian refugee response, Paul Spiegel, reported that Ukrainian refugees have generally been well-received by neighboring European countries. War refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, however, faced considerably different and more restrictive immigration policies. According to reporting done by NPR, Poland, a country that has received several million Ukrainian refugees in the past few months, kept thousands of war refugees from the Middle East from entering their borders only a few months prior.
Bilan says that he feels a twinge of guilt distancing himself from the news.
“How privileged am I to say, ‘This is ruining my day, so I’m just going to turn it off,’” Bilan says. “This isn’t helping me, and it isn’t helping me help anybody.”
Away From Home
Bilan’s family and support network live a couple-hours drive from Eugene, but international students at the UO do not have that luxury.
Becky Crabtree is the associate director at the International Student and Scholar Services, and she and her team work with international students as they navigate their visa status, scholarship applications, financial viability and emergency responses to global conflict.
Not only is the ISSS a visa sponsor for international students, it is also an aggregator of emergency financial and legal resources. If a global catastrophe occurs in an international student’s home country, Crabtree and her team will reach out to the students from that country with a list of aid and resources that the ISSS keeps handy.
After the invasion, the departments of the Division of Global Engagement sent resource documents to Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Georgian and Moldovian students with information on how they can apply for financial and legal aid. The document includes links to applications for off-campus employment, federally-sponsored Higher Education Relief Funds and emergency financial aid.
Crabtree says UO’s Ukrainian students took about two months to reach out to the ISSS for support after the invasion started.
“I think the first month or two they were in shock, just trying to figure out how long this was going to last,” Crabtree says. “They were more concerned about their families than their own situation.”
When a crisis strikes an international student’s home country, Crabtree says her team has to think holistically about who in the student population will be affected and in what ways.
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Western economies retaliated with sanctions on Russian banks and exports. These actions have devalued the rouble, ultimately causing inflation in Russia to rise to 17.8% in April. The consequences of this high inflation rate is passed down to the Russian consumer, including the parents of Russian international students. Crabtree says about 10 Russian students are negatively impacted by these sanctions, as their families back home have faced increased job insecurity and inflated consumer prices. These international students too have qualified for some of the emergency resources offered by the ISSS.
Even though their unit is responsible for students they sponsor, who are non-immigrants, Crabtree says the ISSS is
“always here for immigrants or even U.S. citizens who selfidentify with what is going on in other countries.”
Late morning on May 14, Paraschuk fi nished his service at Living Word. As the congregation fi led out of the pews into the church lobby, Victor Muzica collapsed his tripods and packed up his camera equipment. Muzica, a photographer and videographer based out of Clackamas, Oregon, records live streams of worship and services at Living Word to be rebroadcast on YouTube and Facebook. He is also an active member of church services and programs at Living Word.
College and high-school-age church members brewed tea and grabbed some light snacks before joining Paraschuk and Muzica for a Bible study session after the service. Paraschuk led a Russian-language study group, Muzica sat in on the English language group. Today, the topic was Hebrews 11:17-18 — Abraham’s off ering of his only son, Isaac, to God.
“Let me ask you this,” Muzica says to the group, “Why does God need to test us?”
A few in the circle raised their hands.
“He’s testing our understanding,” says one.
“It’s about free will,” says another.
The group thought aloud about the message of the verse, and Muzica took the opportunity to share his take:
“God takes responsibility even through our division,” Muzica says. “He will fi nd the solution and lead us to a happy end.”
The group seemed satisfi ed by this answer as the Bible study came to a close. Church-goers at Living Word were smiling and embracing. If they were worried about the invasion, it didn’t show on their faces or in their voices.
Paraschuk says that Living Word’s offi cial stance is and always will be fi rmly anti-war, a sentiment he encourages among his congregation. But Russia’s manipulation of information about the war’s progress has obscured the role it’s played in causing this crisis for many at the church. Some members of Living Word only speak Russian, and Paraschuk says that most of the news content they consume is Russian state-sponsored propaganda.
Russian speakers who don’t have access to the internet and who don’t understand English-language news often rely on the narratives constructed by Russian-language news stations for information on the confl ict. And on March 4, Russia enacted two laws that criminalize independent war reporting and anti-war protest in Russia, making counter-narratives against the war in Ukraine illegal to report or broadcast and near impossible to disseminate to Russian-language news consumers, according to Human Rights Watch.
In the last two months, the New York Times reviewed more than 50 hours of Russian television footage. They found that Russian news stations have frequently accused Ukrainian
offi cials and Western media outlets of fabricating evidence of Russian war crimes. At the same time, Russian news outlets are spinning their own narrative of the war to frame Ukrainians as the perpetrators of violence against their own people. Photos of Ukrainian civilians lying dead in Bucha, Kyiv were called a “hoax” and “staged” by Russian tele-journalists. ProRussian news media has convinced some Russian-speakers that the confl ict has largely been perpetrated by Ukrainian forces. BBC reported that some Ukrainians living in targeted cities called their parents to tell them about the devastation of the shelling, only for their parents to question or even deny their children’s testimonies. Despite Living Word’s anti-war stance, Paraschuk says that many in the congregation believe that Russia is innocent. He also says that there have been moments of tension between groups in the church whose viewpoints on the war confl ict are not compatible. But Paraschuk has been attuned to the misinformation-based division within Living Word since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because of the infl uence of Russian state-sponsored media on some of his congregation, Paraschuk says that he avoids discussing specifi cs about the war during his services. Instead he emphasizes the importance of spreading compassion and sending aid to the victims of tragedy, no matter the causes. “ You’re constantly checking the news, and it’s just more bad news. It was constantly messing with my head.” “You just have to say, ‘You have this picture. I have a different picture,’” Paraschuk -Vlad Bilan says. “The reality we will all see after this is over.’” Paraschuk says that the best he can do as a spiritual leader is cultivate an attitude of compassion at Living Word, regardless of what’s on the news. And to do that, Paraschuk says that the church will continue raising money to support Ukrainians aff ected by the invasion. The end of this confl ict is not yet in sight, and new humanitarian eff orts continue to develop as the people of Ukraine face new and unforeseen challenges. On May 23, Bilan organized a GoFundMe campaign to help Ukrainian high school student refugees’ move to Oregon to continue their education. With help from his mom, a pastor at Sunnyside Adventist Church in Portland, Bilan’s goal is to raise funds to help pay for those students’ visas, fl ights, textbooks and other essential items. The amount of support and unity he sees coming out of the Slavic community in response to this confl ict is empowering, Bilan says. “That ‘let’s go’ attitude and spotlight and worldwide support has been so uplifting,” Bilan says. “Seeing the work that the church and my family have been doing has inspired me to keep helping in any way I can.”
Podcast PODCAST Talkshow
Stay tuned for monthly episodes featuring follow-ups on previous Ethos stories, inside scoops on our reporters’ processes, and indepth coverage of the Eugene community. Coming out early each month, the Ethos Podcast brings the magazine’s mission of raising underrepresented voices to the forefront while also focusing on our sources and reporters beyond the initial story. Thus far, we have covered West Eugene’s fi ght for environmental justice and our most recent episode explores young journalists experience with trauma reporting.
Scan the QR code to listen to the first episode:
with Kate Jaques Prentice
EP. 1: STILL WAITING: WEST EUGENE RESIDENTS STAND BY, CONTINUOUSLY THREATENED BY THEIR OWN SOIL
A model swings on a dancing pole. According to Centre for Social Connectedness, a non-profit focused on building social connections, sex work is often stigmatized as disgraceful. This social stigma was born in how the law treats sex work, according to the Centre.
Written by Nika Bartoo-Smith Photographed by Illka Sankari Illustrated by Sophie Barlow
The Other Side of the Pole
Despite the stigma and danger that surround the industry, sex workers in Eugene still find empowerment and confidence through their jobs.
Taking the stage in chunky platform heels and a custommade black glitter bodysuit, Nena Pratt started a slow reveal striptease inspired by years of being a burlesque performer. “Living Dead Girl” by Rob Zombie blared on the speakers. Pratt spent many nights at Bobbi’s VIP Room, surrounded by mirrors, broken lights and other dancers.
“I had somebody compare my dancing to strip clubs in the 80s when it was all pole tricks. And it was just hot girls being hot on stage,” Pratt says.
In 2018, Pratt decided she wanted to go to massage school and needed to come up with an extra $1,000 to pay for her year of classes. She says she was intrigued by her roommate, who had been stripping at a club in Springfield for a few months. Unsure it would be a good fit for her, she did not immediately consider it.
“I took one pole dance class and dislocated my knee and couldn’t walk for four months. So I was pretty put off by that experience,” Pratt said, although she was already involved in other aspects of sex work through a phone sex hotline and the online platform OnlyFans.
Her roommate, a dancer at a different club at the time, recommended that Pratt apply to Bobby’s VIP Lounge in Springfield, Oregon, a club with a “lower bar” where she wouldn’t need an audition or be expected to pole dance. She worked at the club until March 2020, dancing as an independent contractor.
At the time, Pratt got questions like: “How could you do that while you have respect for yourself?”
-Nena Pratt
“For me, the idea was especially funny because people saw it as using my body for work, which I don’t know that I have ever had a job that didn’t require me to actively use my body to accomplish the job,” Pratt said.
Sex work is just that: work. But it is set apart due to the stigma it can carry.
Sex work is the consensual exchange of sexual services for money, including exotic dancing and photos or videos via OnlyFans, according to the Human Rights Watch. According to the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness, a nonprofit focused on building social connection and combating social isolation, the stigma surrounding sex work is often characterized by “a mark of disgrace, a social discrediting, or a spoiled identity.” It argues that the root of this stigma is likely grounded in how the law treats sex work. According to Amnesty International, the criminalization of sex work makes the workers less safe, allowing more instances of abuse and harassment. Prostitution is illegal in all 50 states, except for a few areas in Nevada. While stripping is legal, the act of sex work remains stigmatized.
Eugene is no exception.
Claire, who prefers to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns, is a content creator for OnlyFans based in Eugene, selling photos and videos for money. She says that she sees stigmas surrounding sex work all the time.
“There are also a lot of assumptions that people that do sex work are troubled or did not choose to become a sex worker,” Claire says. “But in my opinion, it’s just like any other job. I think something that’s really important is that people should be comfortable with their bodies.”
Pratt and Claire don’t have physical sex with their clients, but they are still sex workers who experience both the stigma and empowerment that comes with it.
“I think sex work has a unique ability to be more exploitative than other lines of work because it’s criminalized in so many ways,” Pratt says. “And because then it lacks legal protection.”
Pratt worked at Bobbi’s for about a year. Although she enjoyed some aspects of the job, there were aspects that she did not like, mostly due to management.
On an average night, Pratt brought home $50. Many clubs have a rule that if clients are not spending money on the entertainment, they are required to leave, according to Pratt. Bobbi’s rule is looser — customers are asked to leave if they aren’t spending money on tipping dancers, gambling or buying drinks, according to Jessica Hills, a bartender and fill-in manager at Bobbi’s. Pratt remembers nights when more than 10 people would be in the club, but none of the dancers made any money because customers were spending it elsewhere.
“In an environment where nobody is making sure that the people who are working are making money, it led to a lot of unpleasant interaction between people working and customers,” Pratt says. “It just felt like there was a lot of lazy management that led to these things.”
Sometimes, Pratt says those customer interactions would get messy, and it often fell on the dancers themselves to take care of it.
Pratt says that she did not have to deal with many problematic customers, but it did happen on occasion. For her, one of the best ways to handle it was setting boundaries, like holding customer’s hands while giving a lap dance to keep them from touching her and sometimes even refusing to help a customer altogether if they gave her a “bad vibe.”
“In an environment like sex work where there is, by design, some element of mystery and slowly moving things forward,” Pratt says, “there are always going to be people who want to push that along and see how far it will go.”
For Pratt, although these experiences were uncomfortable, she treated them as a way to practice setting clear boundaries, she says.
Dealing with customers who crossed boundaries is not unique to Bobbi’s. Diana, a dancer in Lane County who also prefers to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns, says that she also has to deal with customer harassment and boundary-crossing almost daily. She says she is often touched by men even when she tells them not to, is called degrading names and was once even punched in the face.
There are bouncers at the club who are supposed to help protect the dancers, but Diana says that oftentimes when she brings a concern forward, the customers are only told to leave for the night with a simple handshake.
“I think that a lot of people don’t realize that someone’s
-Nena Pratt
worst day is your every day. And it’s consistent sexual assault and consistent abuse,” Diana says. “I think that people don’t acknowledge the other side of dancing.”
Diana says sex work is not all it is made out to be. One of the ways she copes with the abuse is by talking to a therapist she trusts and finding support in those she is close with.
Pratt says she wishes it wasn’t all her responsibility to care for herself in an exploitative industry.
“If people actually cared about people being exploited in sex work, they would be able to shift the conversation to increasing protections and giving sex workers legal working status,” Pratt says. “I think making them all legally employees would go a long way in preventing a lot of workplace abuses.”
While trauma and mistreatment are part of the job for both Diana and Pratt, there are other parts that they both find pleasurable. They both expressed an increased sense of confidence in their bodies at some point while working. The confidence fluctuated, but a common theme of body and sexual empowerment remained.
Since 2020, Pratt has learned there is more to sex work than meets the eye. There are some challenges, but most stem from systemic issues resulting from a lack of legal protection. However, there are parts of sex work that are uniquely pleasurable.
Pratt said working in a club has helped her stop worrying about whether people found her attractive. One of the first things she learned while stripping is you’ll always be someone’s type.
“I have a little bit of a belly. It’s something I’ve always been insecure about because it’s something society wants us to be insecure about,” Pratt says. “I did not think that anybody would be into my stomach or my stretch marks until we have a customer come in who’s like, ‘I will pay you $100 to sit in my lap and just squish me right now for 20 minutes.’”
That same confidence carried over into other areas of her life as well, teaching Pratt a new sense of self-love and appreciation for her own body. That body confidence has stuck with her even now that she is no longer stripping.
“It made me stop worrying so much whether or not anybody could find me attractive,” Pratt said. “Not only was I not so insecure about having a belly, but I kind of stopped caring if anybody could tell. That mental attitude of not caring stuck with me after I was no longer on the clock.”
Diana says she feels this heightened sense of body confidence as well.
When Diana first started dancing, she says, she assumed she would be required to do makeup and hair and wear expensive lingerie. In reality, she gets to come to work wearing what is most comfortable to her, which is often underwear from Target and a crop top.
Being able to dress how she chooses has helped Diana feel more comfortable on the job. She has also noticed physical changes in her body as a result of dancing, something she says she is proud of.
“Now I can do pull-ups, and I’m strong, and I have muscle. I’ve never loved my body so much,” Diana says. “And I have a very womanly body. I have hips. I have stretch marks. It’s a body that’s not normally appreciated, and it’s so appreciated in my line of work.”
For Claire, OnlyFans serves as a platform that has helped her claim and embrace her sexuality.
“I’ve always been very sex-positive; nothing is ever taboo to me,” Claire says. “I just thought OnlyFans was a really cool way people were embracing their bodies and claiming themselves as sexual beings.”
In July 2021, Claire started an OnlyFans account, a platform that had long appealed to her. Depending on how much time she puts into the work, she says she can easily make upwards of $600 a month from posting photos and videos for her followers.
While money is an added bonus, what really compelled Claire to become a content creator was the increased confidence she thought it would bring.
“I’ll make jokes because people that I haven’t talked to for years will all of a sudden be hitting me up, sliding into my DMs,” Claire says. “It’s a sense of confidence for sure — people that didn’t give you any attention before are now all of a sudden literally paying you to look the way you do. It’s empowering.”
Facing stigma and mistreatment at work is common, but Pratt and Claire say that is not unique to sex work. Pratt says she still feels empowered by her work while also acknowledging a need to challenge the stigma and create better working conditions.
“I think that the more that people embrace sex work, the less taboo it becomes,” Claire says. “And the more conversations that we have around just sex in general and OnlyFans and sex work, the more that it can be less of a shameful thing.”
A model touches their skin. Nena Pratt, not pictured, has had experience in sex work through a phone sex hotline service and as a dancer at the Springfield Club Bobbi’s VIP lounge. Pratt says dancing helped her find confidence in her own skin. To Pratt, dancing has helped her realize that, regardless of what you look like, you’ll always be someone’s type.
When Art Meets Activism
How Kundai Kapurura stepped into her identity as an artist to give back to her community.
Written by Haley Landis | Photographed by Collin Bell | Illustrated by Sophie Barlow
It’s midmorning on a Friday when Kundai Kapurura enters the sewing studio nestled in the corner of the Erb Memorial Union at the center of the University of Oregon campus.
Large spools of thread protrude from a board hanging on one of the room’s walls. An archaic-looking weaving machine rests below the back window, and shelves rimming the room hold sewing machines, bins of materials and a collection of sewing books.
Kapurura pulls out a seat at one of two worktables in the center of the room and drops her bag of materials on the other. She grabs a pair of scissors and lifts out a handful of neon fabrics. Today’s design is a custom order for a couple in California: two matching crewnecks, each with color-contrasting, hand-drawn flames sewn into their hems. She begins cutting out the pattern she had drawn the previous week, moving the scraps aside to save for later projects. Things are quiet in the studio today, but Kapurura often works in her room with music playing. She finds her creativity thrives in isolation, something she learned during the pandemic.
“I can get in a zone where it feels like nothing else exists but what I’m working on,” she says, transfixed on the fabric in front of her.
The project is one of many designs that Kapurura has taken on since launching the clothing line Philanthropy Phabrics with her friend Sophia Cobb in 2020. The brand’s mission, Kapurura says, is to create “a sustainable future through handcrafted fashion.” They take clothing donations, thrifted items or pieces from their own closets and transform them into new designs, infused with aspects of Zimbabwean and Colombian from each of their backgrounds.
But for Kapurura, the work is more than just clothing design — it’s a means of giving back to her community and being a social justice advocate. The brand donates 10% of its proceeds to local activism causes, focusing on ones that need timely support. Kapurura and Cobb are dedicated to causes that “uplift their community” and eventually hope to expand beyond local causes to national ones. Moreover, Kapurura is learning to take up space as a Black woman in business, use her voice and harness her creative abilities to spur social change. She does it all while balancing life as a full-time student and business owner.
“She’s an amazing artist with a humble heart, a passion to serve others in that social justice lens and create space for other artists,” says her twin sister, Kudzai Kapurura.
Alongside her twin sister, Kapurura grew up in a tight-knit family with her parents and older brother. Her parents moved from Zimbabwe to the U.S. in 2000, the year she was born, making her a first-generation American. From a young age, Kapurura was an artist in the making, even if she didn’t see it. She would often doodle on pamphlets in church, do origami in class or spend her free time painting.
Kundai Kapurura is a product design major and co-founder of Philanthropy Fabrics. Kapurura began hand-painting and upcycling clothes in 2020, at a time when she felt — due to the emergence of COVID-19, the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasingly destructive wildfire season — a general sense of unrest globally as well as within the Oregon community. After reaching out to her co-founder, Sophia Cobb, the pair began creating and selling sustainably sourced clothing with their own creative spin while donating a portion of their profits to various local organizations.
“Kundai is one of those people who is creative in so many diff erent senses,” Kudzai says.
Her father, Tapiwa Kapurura, heavily infl uenced her studious habits and strong work ethic. He attended law school and now works helping refugees acclimate to life in the states. His fearless pursuit of tasks such as writing a book showed her how to tackle even the most daunting projects.
Her mother, Victoria Kapurura, passed down a skill integral to her life in Zimbabwe: sewing. She had started sewing lessons in the third grade in Zimbabwe, so it was only natural she taught the skill to her daughter. Kundai picked it up quickly, along with coloring, drawing and cutting designs from various materials. Her mother encouraged her creativity and tried to incorporate natural resources like reeds, tree bark and various fi bers they had used in her village.
Kapurura went on to take a home economics class in middle school that loosely resembled fashion design. It was some of her fi rst exposure to the world of design. She laughs recalling the teacher explaining color theory and how “black is a slimming color.” She sees it as a testament to how far she has come with design from the early days of those introductory principles.
Her artistic interests played a large role in her decision to come to UO as a product design major. Her mother says the major “really represents who she has been all her life,” given her artistic nature as a child. Kapurura spent the beginning of her fi rst year exploring the many mediums the program off ered. She experimented with stop-motion animation, off ered. She experimented with stop-motion animation, collaborative painting, collaging, 3D modeling and more. collaborative painting, collaging, 3D modeling and more. Kapurura says she loved the quiet time and getting to focus Kapurura says she loved the quiet time and getting to focus on what she was creating.
And then the pandemic hit.
Quarantined back in Salem with her family, she spent her Quarantined back in Salem with her family, she spent her summer creating art with whatever was lying around. summer creating art with whatever was lying around.
“Using household materials to create art was my passion “Using household materials to create art was my passion during the pandemic,” Kapurura says. For one project, she took during the pandemic,” Kapurura says. For one project, she took items like wire hangers, bottle caps and even a fi dget spinner items like wire hangers, bottle caps and even a fi dget spinner to create a sculpture inspired by “Useless Machines,” a work to create a sculpture inspired by “Useless Machines,” a work created by Bruno Munari.
Despite her natural talents, she struggled to view herself as Despite her natural talents, she struggled to view herself as a true artist. She felt she didn’t have the ability or the notoriety a true artist. She felt she didn’t have the ability or the notoriety that comes with the title. But it was during quarantine when that comes with the title. But it was during quarantine when Kapurura fi nally picked up a painting set — a Christmas gift Kapurura fi nally picked up a painting set — a Christmas gift from her sister that had been confi ned to a corner for the from her sister that had been confi ned to a corner for the previous six months.
“I was so afraid to touch that art set. When I tell you I didn’t think of myself as an artist, I really didn’t,” Kapurura says.
The painting set breathed life into her creative aspirations. It led her to start an Instagram account for her art, where she began to share it with the world. Paintings of abstract designs, fl owers and a remake of a Frank Ocean album cover fi lled her profi le page.
Kapurura then reached out to Sophia Cobb, a high school
