Kamal is the Founding Creative Director for Understory, a developing private, home-based initiative dedicated to regenerating Altadena’s arts ecosystem by stewarding land, space, and resources in service of artistic practice and community wellbeing. It is a place of imagination and innovation, where artists, thinkers, and makers produce stimulating work that sits at the intersection of the arts and sciences.

Through a year-long fellowship, Understory invites a select cohort of artists to work at a residential property equipped with maker studios, a food preparation space, an outdoor gathering space, and a community garden. Fellows are chosen across a wide range of creative disciplines, including visual art, music, media, creative technology, culinary arts, ecology-based practices, theater, writing, scientific inquiry, and community co-creation. In addition to dedicated workspace, fellows benefit from shared learning, mutual support, and collaboration within their cohort.

This inter-generational, cross-disciplinary exchange is central to the initiative’s approach, fostering artistic growth while encouraging the kind of boundary-crossing conversation that generates genuinely new ideas.

Understory also functions as a site for intimate, community-centered experiences connected to the fellows’ work and practices. These may include film screenings, book readings, listening sessions, collaborative storytelling gatherings, small exhibitions, chef-led dinners, science-art dialogues, and other participatory events that invite the public into meaningful creative exchange.

Over time, by supporting local and visiting artists in Altadena, Understory aims to contribute to both the legacy and future of this beloved community. Cultivating a regenerative creative ecosystem that nourishes bodies, hearts, and minds, stimulates curiosity and knowledge-making, strengthens collective wellbeing, and helps people make meaning across generations.