It's a beautiful Tuesday afternoon in Tampa, with 70-degree weather and a slight breeze, and Kale Roberts is getting ready to run errands for a couple of hours.
As they pull the brightly colored truck out of the driveway, we begin to talk about its latest paint job.
"So last year, actually, at this time, right now, we were at Fuse Box Festival in Austin," Roberts said. "I drove the truck from here to Texas and two artists — Michelle Devereaux and Silky Shoemaker — and myself came up with a design and hand painted this for five days. The title of the piece is called 'prime specimens.' "
The truck is tricked out with paintings of female body builders of various ethnicities — and show dogs. Across the back it says "Failure is always an option."
Taking 'truck culture' in a different direction
Roberts, a nonbinary artist, art instructor, and professional piercer, says trans people and cis people alike are constantly failing to achieve false images of the "ideal body" presented to us through media and sports culture.
"And so the truck becomes this extension of that and that we repaint the truck many times like it is this object that is tied to masculinity."
Roberts says when you think of "truck culture," you often picture tailgates at sports games, flags, and masculinity.
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They say there’s queer joy in turning the traditional idea of trucks on its head by putting the truck in drag.
“I really love this space so very much," Roberts said. "And I've built a really beautiful — and with the help of really other beautiful people — a community around me. And I've fought really hard in my own life to not have this narrative of tragedy that constantly gets thrust against my body and defined that way.”
Roberts says the truck has evolved a lot over the past few years, much like our bodies evolve over time.
“It becomes a group conversation about what the truck can be,” they said.
The truck’s collective identity, formed by the various artists who adorn it, and the interactions people have with it, are ever shifting. Just like Roberts' own nonbinary identity and body.
“Many times people don't even have exposure to trans bodies, which is why we've got so much hate spreading around, because they don't even have a human interaction with it," Roberts said. "And so it's with that exchange of other people. It's a collective identity.
"And so the truck becomes a collective identity of putting a truck in drag and rewriting these white supremacist, confederate flag — I say that specifically tied to the South — content that is tied to the truck. So I think taking symbols in general, and putting them in drag is really important right now.”
Sharing their vision
This traveling art gallery, what Roberts calls "Tailgate Projects,” also makes art accessible to the public across the greater Tampa Bay region.
"Being its own gallery space is giving people an access point because a huge chunk of the population is not going into art galleries," Roberts said.
The gallery extends to the inside of the truck, too. The dash is fashioned in bright greens and pinks and yellows, and rhinestones encased in resin. The dashboard fabric has tiny naked figures of women carrying men, and when the driver and passenger doors open, they reveal a set of toothy jaws that make the truck come alive from a rear-view perspective.
Roberts says the truck throws up queer "smoke signals" that indicate it's a safe space for the marginalized.
"Like the truck being parked in a parking lot full of other souped-up giant trucks with flags all over ... and then you see this, you're like, ‘oh my God, OK. All right, maybe today I can go into Bass Pro Shop.’ Like it's just, you're not alone."Kale Roberts
And while nothing in the design is inherently queer, "we're not talking about rainbows here," Roberts said. "And we're not talking about hankies in a back pocket."
It still sends a message to the larger queer community that it's approachable.
While no one directly comments on Kale Roberts' truck today — or leaves a thank you note on the windshield or spits a slur in passing — people take notice.
And sometimes, Roberts says, it's not about the obvious interactions people have with the truck, but the message it sends in a crowded parking lot.
"Like the truck being parked in a parking lot full of other souped-up giant trucks with flags all over, American flags and Blue Lives Matter flags, stickers on it, and machine guns, and Florida man, and all of these sorts of things. And then you see this, you're like, ‘oh my God, OK. All right, maybe today I can go into Bass Pro Shop.’ Like it's just, you're not alone."
In that moment, Roberts says, the truck feels like home.
