Businesswoman and community leader Amara Andrews kicked off her campaign for mayor of Cedar Rapids on Thursday evening with a event that was livestreamed on her campaign’s Facebook page. “I will bring a new vision to local government,” Andrews said during her speech at the event. “I will be an advocate for labor unions. I […]
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Watch: Iowa City portrait artist Heith A. Banowetz seeks to capture the soul in old photographs
Soulful eyes, sensitive hands, old-fashioned facial hair, delicate lines and stippling. These and other, more subtle features make up the distinctive style of self-taught Iowa City artist Heith Banowetz, who crafts portraits using “humble” materials like pen, pencil and charcoal. “I feel like sometimes we have this tendency to feel rushed or pressured into speaking. […]
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Revolution and Beatitudes of Black Liberation: A video essay by Stacey Walker
Produced by Little Village in partnership with Witching Hour and Englert Wavelength Below is an excerpt from Walker’s essay, published in Little Village’s February 2021 issue. What is Black Liberation? What does it mean to be free? Black people have been fighting for liberation since we arrived on the shores of what would come to […]
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Watch: Best of the CRANDIC 2020 winners say ‘thank you!’
Normally, we’d be celebrating Best of the CRANDIC by bringing together the small business owners, artists, musicians and local personalities who won with the community who voted for them for one big, huggy, droplet-spready party. Since that can’t happen, we asked our winners to record a few words of thanks. We wish we could be […]
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Watch: Mark Vollenweider’s mighty pen
“I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about the world I’d like to live in, than the world that we do live in,” Mark Vollenweider told Little Village. During a studio visit, the Iowa City artist talked about discovering his artistic medium, the impact of COVID-19 and politics on his work and how anger can […]
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Iowa City teen Kasey Dawson overcame homelessness and loss to graduate high school. A year later, she’s still fighting for a place to call her own.
In January 2019, Little Village received an email submission from a City High senior named Kasey Dawson titled “My Life Story.” “I never understood what it meant to be depressed,” it began. Over a nearly 2,000-word essay, the 17-year-old reflected on her life, including the events that helped shape her depression: Her father robbing and […]
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Watch: The art of an all-day art-a-thon
Searching for new ways to share art during the pandemic, Public Space One decided to reinvent the telethon — raising money like old-fashioned telethons, but also celebrating the work of the artists it collaborates with. PS1 Director John Engelbrecht said that for the 24-hour event, artists were asked to “share inside your studio, or share […]
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Watch: One trashy art show
Post Consumer Content, a series of art installations curated by artist Louise Fisher, featured the work of five area artists over the course of five weeks in July and August. Each week, one artist displayed work outside Public Space One that took used items most would discard, and showed how art can reveal the possibilities […]
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Watch: Kymbyrly Koesters tends to the artsiest garden in Iowa City
“Gardening is art and art is gardening,” Kymbyrly Koesters told Little Village. As artist/gardener in residence for Public Space One, Koesters has transformed the sod around the nonprofit’s new home into a space where nature, art and social issues meet. “I’ve always seen and understood how gardens reflect art and activism and change,” she said.
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Downtown Iowa City Arts Showcase: Rachel Yoder of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature
In 2008, Iowa City’s literary heritage earned its recognition as the first UNESCO City of Literature in the United States. The nonprofit Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature is building on that legacy by working to advance writing on all levels: local, national and international. Rachel Yoder talked to Little Village about some of the […]
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Supervisor Stacey Walker on defunding the police, marijuana laws and becoming a ‘radioactive’ politician
Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker told a crowd of more than 2,000 at Greene Square Park in downtown Cedar Rapids on June 6 to “understand the largeness of this moment” and that they are “part of a movement — a part of living history.” The protest in Cedar Rapids against police violence and racism was […]
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‘This is a moral moment for the world’: Images from the protests in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City
“Understand the largeness of this moment,” Stacey Walker told the people gathered in Greene Square Park on Saturday, June 6. “These will be the pictures our kids see in the history books. We know in our hearts, in our souls, that this is a moral moment for the world.” More than 2,000 people had come […]
