Clara Spars (Stanford ‘21): Supporting Communities in Crisis through Collaboration and Visual Activism
Artist Spotlight
In less than six months, Clara Spars (’21) has fundraised over $22,000 for various social causes through sales from her artwork alone.
Like many creatives in recent months, Clara, who is majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing, has found ways to use her work as a form of activism, specifically for the racial justice movement and communities impacted by Covid-19. Her business, KITA Products, which began as a fashion line, is now dedicated to supporting social justice through designs that reflect the causes for which they raise funds.
One of her most popular stickers, entitled “Silence is Violence,” raised over $15,000, with corporate matching, in a matter of days. Created shortly after the murder of George Floyd, in partnership with Stanford’s Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Xi Beta Chapter, the sticker quickly gained popularity among students and community members aligned with the cause.
Clara said of its design: “The message ‘silence is violence’ is especially salient now. Silence is not an option. We all need to stand up, speak out, and support Black communities.” Within twenty-four hours of its release, the sticker raised over $1,400 for North Star Health Collective, an organization that provides health care services, resources and training to the Minnesota community. After seventy-two hours, the same sticker raised $14,200 for We Love Lake Street, another Minnesota organization dedicated to helping small businesses and community organizations on Lake Street in Minneapolis rebuild after being impacted by protests. To date, this sticker has raised $14,700-and counting.
Since creating the Silence is Violence sticker, Clara has designed several more fundraiser stickers, each of which has a distinctive style and important messaging aligned with the values and causes of the organizations she collaborates with.
“Making these symbols is an expression of solidarity, but it only feels appropriate when the people involved with a given movement are connected in the creation process,” Clara said in a recent interview. Given that, all of KITA’s designs are created in partnership with the respective organization or community members.
One of her most recently created products was created to raise money for SiSaLeSe, an educational and cultural center in Arusha, Tanzania, that focuses on enriching the lives of and opening educational opportunities for Tanzanian youth.
“The SiSaLeSe sticker incorporates the names of four villages in Tanzania, the colors of the Tanzanian flag and traditional Maasai styles of beading and clothing, all under the guidance and approval of Neema Loy [from Saitababu, Tanzania] who founded SiSaLeSe,” Clara said. “I wouldn’t make such a design without interacting with [Neema] firsthand and ensuring that the symbol is respectful to the backgrounds and cultures that it is meant to celebrate.”
These stickers highlight two of the many products KITA has available for purchase. Clara’s work with KITA is extremely impressive, especially given the fact that she began KITA less than eight months ago. But her journey as an artist began long before she created her business; in middle school, Clara spent her free time drawing and would occasionally sell her art painted onto T-shirts.
“My only experience with art at Stanford was taking Drawing I the fall quarter of my sophomore year,” she said. “I hadn’t really had any time to draw otherwise until I started KITA. Prior to that, I only ever doodled in the margins of notebooks when I couldn’t focus in class.”
It wasn’t until her frosh year at Stanford when she began selling her art to raise money for causes important to her. After the Tubbs Fire devastated Santa Rosa in 2017, Clara designed several fundraiser stickers and donated all of the proceeds — around $700 — to the UndocuFund for Fire Relief to assist undocumented immigrants affected by the fires.
Three years later, she formed KITA. “I started KITA Products during winter break of my junior year at Stanford as a way of exploring the two cultural sides of my identity: my mother is Balinese and my father is American,” Clara said. “My background as a biracial woman influenced all of KITA’s original designs. For example, the ‘Feed Me’ design features an Indonesian dish called mie kuah, and emerges as an homage to when my grandparents would feed me as a little girl.”
The unique name of her business name draws from her Indonesian roots as well; Clara explained, “‘Kita’ is the Indonesian word for us, and I felt that this word did a good job of capturing the sentiment of unity that I wanted the brand to inspire.” This concept is well reflected in the Unity Sticker, which Clara created to raise money for Stanford service workers who were laid off due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The sticker reads, “In unity is strength.” Indeed, the difficulty of recent times has shown us the importance of this message and the necessity of Clara’s work.
Today, Clara says that KITA’s mission has evolved to “generate visual symbols for movements to unify and rally behind.” KITA currently has seven simultaneous sticker fundraisers for the organizations mentioned above, We Love Lake Street and SiSaLeSe, in addition to the Equal Justice Initiative, FarmLink, and the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID Relief Fund. These projects have raised over $22,000 in donations in under six months.
Her work has undoubtedly been meaningful to the communities that she has impacted with her designs, but her creations are incredibly personal to her as well. “A lot of the drawings also explore the experience of being a young woman,” Clara said. “Whether inundated in worries, basking in self-reflection, or finding power within oneself at unexpected times.”
In these unexpected times, which many acknowledge as an historic reckoning, Clara Spars reveals the power of visual activism in merging personal passions with social justice commitments. Her work encourages all of us to take part in these movements in any way we can.
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Clara Spars (she/her) is a Stanford undergraduate in the Class of 2021 majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of FACES Magazine (via Forum for American-Chinese Exchange at Stanford), a Stanford Habla Tutor, and the Head of Marketing at Stanford Planned Parenthood. She can be reached at cspars@stanford.edu. She can be found on Instagram and Facebook @claraspars and @kitaproducts. Her products can be purchased at kitaproducts.com.
Therese Santiago (she/her) is a Stanford undergraduate double majoring in English and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She is passionate about racial justice, community organizing, photography, and stories that move people. If you are a Stanford artist interested in being interviewed for our Artist Spotlight series or have any questions, please contact Therese at tsantiag@stanford.edu.
