Good Art. Kind People. Surprising Places.
6:30 pm, November 2018—Judy and I were exhausted and wrung out, waiting for the elevator to take us down from the 6th floor of Converse’s headquarters and spit us out into the Boston winter evening. Week 4, workday 16, done.
Judy takes beautiful photographs; a few of them semi-anonymously peppered the walls of the creative agency where we worked in Portland. I had a room I was too broke to furnish. Would you want to put on a photography show in my house? Really? Why not? Our coworker Danielle walked up and overheard. Do you need a producer? Of course we did. Without Danielle, Paragraph Gallery would be another fever dream of overworked creatives dreading the dark at the end of the day. Later in Portland, Nicole joined and made Paragraph visible and beautiful—art in and of itself.
Paragraph is a pop-up gallery that appears in unexpected places and showcases the work of emerging artists and writers—usually with a one night show/party where the artist is present.
Judy Kim was our first show’s feature. Shirley Huong Wong and Hui OY, together, our second.
Danielle is our producer.
Nicole Liao is our designer.
I, Trenna Sharpe, had the idea and an empty room.
Paragraph Gallery’s first show, 24/7, a photographic installation by Judy Kim
“To make a disarmingly comfortable space for the creation and experience of art in Portland for everyone.”
Back in Boston in 2018, Paragraph didn’t even have a name, much less a defined purpose beyond a simmering hope that a project might stave off seasonal depression. In Portland, Danielle, Nicole, and I more clearly identified the mission which guides our choices to this day: to make a disarmingly comfortable space for the creation and experience of art in Portland for everyone. We’re fiercely dedicated to opening doors and leveling the playing field, to dismantling scenes and avoiding cliques, to amplifying voices and supporting the marginalized through art and writing.
It’s important to note here that while we call out cliques in our mission, we the originators met at a big one: Instrument, a creative agency in Portland with a not-incorrect reputation for insularity. We work hard to push outside our sphere, but the relative insularity of our origin is a valid critique, so keep making it.
Paragraph was born, first, from the desire to fill an empty room in my house with something. There’s a lot of art in the world, but never enough. I wanted to fill that room with art by people I respect, art by people challenging the status quo with words and music and beauty. By status quo I mean, mainly: white men and exclusive creatives with backpacks already full of social and artistic capital. Could we make a space that gives great artists, who maybe haven’t networked their way to local fame yet, a spotlight?
I believe walking into someone’s home is unavoidably disarming. Taking off your shoes, navigating the energies of their pets, smelling the scents built up in their kitchen after so many invisible breakfasts, lunches, dinners. You’re in a space where people feel the most, where they cry, where they have sex, where they feel happy, where they dream.
Walking into an art gallery is almost unavoidably discomfiting: you’re as much on display as the art itself while walking around that white, bright room, trying to stare intelligently at things while a bored docent watches. I always worry I’ll knock something over. Sometimes I leave inspired. I always leave wishing I could get past the discomfort and into the experience of the art itself.
Shirley Huong Wong and Hui OY’s Deluxe Market show at Paragraph Gallery
I want Paragraph to welcome people. To be a front porch for everyone to gather, to share stories, to reveal themselves, to laugh, to joke, to relax. To get comfortable. To feel uncomfortable next to vivid vulnerability and truth, and always changed for the better.
We’ll see you soon.
Trenna Sharpe grew up in Tennessee. She lives and works as a poet and UX writer in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in WMN.Zine, Homology, Five:2:One Mag, The Tangerine, and others. She helped create Paragraph Gallery, along with Danielle Juncal and Nicole Liao.
Text by Trenna Sharpe
Photography by Renée Lopez, Judy Kim, Shirley Huong Wong