Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

“What’s in the Bag?” – A Community Art Project

Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery

By Anne Greenwood with Sandy Sampson

• Dates: June 5 – September 25, 2014
• Gallery hours: 9am-5pm, Monday – Friday,
• Opening reception in the gallery: Thursday, June 5, 5-7pm, Terrell Hall 102, PCC Cascade Campus
• Artist talk: Thursday, June 5, 4-5pm, Moriarty Arts and Humanities Building (MAHB) room 221, PCC Cascade Campus
• Gallery location: Terrell Hall 102, PCC Cascade Campus, 705 N. Killingsworth, Portland, OR 97217
• Gallery workshops with artists: Mondays, June 23, July 7, and July 28, 1-3pm, Terrell Hall 102, PCC Cascade Campus.
  All are welcome for conversation and handwork. No experience necessary, and all materials provided.

Cascade Gallery presents “What’s in the Bag?” – the archive of a yearlong community art project reflecting conversations about identity. Riffing on the 1930’s Sea Island Sugar Company feedsack rag doll series, project participants designed their own doll patterns through processes of writing, drawing, collage, sewing, talking, and listening. The feedsack and its social history becomes the metaphorical container for issues of identity around personal and communal sustainability, labor, food and culture. Participant conversations along with their new feedsack designs, rag dolls, and doll patterns emerge as artifacts of exploration of individual identities. The resulting archive of art displayed in the Cascade Gallery reveals various influences on our identities as well as contrasts between identities we embrace and those projected upon us.

Project participants and collaborators

• Portland Community College art students
• Jefferson High School art and English students
• Lewis and Clark 2014 Gender Symposium attendees
• p:ear homeless and transitional youths
• Sexual and Gender Minority Youth Resource Center (SMYRC) youths
• Beach Dual Immersion (Spanish/English) School students and community
• Amy Hargrave