Community Member Profile: Kellz
We are so thankful to have Kellz join our team as our newest intern! Kellz, a long time volunteer and patron, is hitting the ground running with Artways: Asheville. A workforce development initiative that creates direct pathways into the arts economy for artists facing economic, systemic, and structural barriers. In a collaboration between Kellz and Jeffrey Burroughs of RADA, the program will launch with five participating artists selected by the Asheville Poverty Initiative and will culminate in a public exhibition on July 10th called First Light: New Voices of the River Arts District.
We asked Kellz a few questions about her time with us at API. In their own words…
How long have you been a part of the Asheville Poverty Initiative and how did you first come to hear about us?
In time past, I discovered the garden and the couch and book /art area in the back right side of the cafe, this is in 2016/17 that I found myself snuggling with Sparrow in the cold of winter and eating so many cupcakes we got sick, in the best ways that one does at Grandma’s house and all the names and faces were a blur then so my recall now is all foggy and I remember Donna and Anne and knew to trust them early on. I felt grounded when there, more than anywhere in the city. I’ve been coming back over and over for a decade, to be sustainable in my humanness either with food or consciousness of the collective importance of asking for help and receiving a compliment from friends I earned the trust of because I relied on neighbors validating my walk on this earth.
How has your perspective of poverty/homelessness/food insecurity/etc in our community changed since becoming involved?
My core concept of how we anticipate and expect folks to show up for us in the reality that if we don’t stop wasting and not sharing that we are glutton for our own punishment. We are a society of selfishness. Sharing and mutual aid is the most important way we will make it through in generations like the current phase of fearmongering to create.
In what way do you use your time, talents, or treasure to support the Asheville Poverty Initiative and 12 Baskets Cafe?
Imagine hours of listening, just listening and making your neighbors feel comfortable and safe. My certifications are a side note in my purpose. My shining skill is to show up, that is my treasure I give, it is the very basis of how to support, and the magic sauce of my talents is I am willing to help with anything necessary to keep the even flow of the “radical hospitality” as it should be. I worked At the Kimpton Arras and Hyatt downtown for 5 years to learn the art of making folks feel included.
What do you believe are the biggest obstacles to ending poverty in our community, or the best solutions?
Complacency is contagious and Asheville is a sad old blues song, and the citizens are moaning at the neglect and selfishness of the bureaucratic money hoarding Ashevillians that do not pass the money in the right direction. Stop the surveys and start the farm food pickups and private home donations of anything and everything applied to survival. If we are gonna make it through this global tragedy called poverty we better share like you did as a kindergartner before they taught you to be selfish
Solutions are simple acreage and farms. We have a lot of this, even the WHO (World Health Organization can throw together quick shelter and provide a stabilized environment. We should give shelter in all the empty buildings that Ingles owns; start with the Innsbruck Mall and allow us all to team in on the property like a united front of Mutual Aid in Branches that make one tree and this includes Haywood, HomewardBound, Tool Library, and Asheville Poverty all under one roof with Bridge Housing in part of the building.
What is your best memory of your time with our organization?
The couch was crammed full at the Archedtype Brewery fundraiser event. It felt like home, in the charisma of the scene. The permeated energy is the resilience of joy. Laughter we all care about every little thing about each other’s life and it is a collective consciousness that sparkles its evident in the way we smile through the sweat and tears that are not a burden, they surface even when we are exhausted and the dish pit is playing water fight and bubble games, because they can. To witness our volunteers, neighbors and staff from API and 12B giggle and make jokes or use crazy jargon of inside jokes that keep us feeling hopeful. The couch moment that Sat. evening was the scenario that keeps me smiling, even when I feel like the odds are against us. Food and flavors go well with silliness. So the cherry on top memory was when the Gemini, Leslee Johnson, asked me ever so nonchalantly to write and speak at the Unlabel Me event last June 2025, and smirked. She gave me purpose inside of this painful season. Opportunity is the word I associate to API. Prof. Johnson models Carpe Diem to my life, it's the power of the way they bring energy to API.
