Paper City Clothing Company is a Holyoke-based organization founded by artist Carlos Peña. In their mission statement they describe themselves as a “small but mighty social enterprise” that creates opportunities for youth to gain skills in the arts. Peña, a designer and printmaker, has a line of screen-printed clothing, a practice he has extended into his work with emerging teen artists in Holyoke. Through their project ArteSana Youth Studio, Peña and his business partner Katy Moonan host screen-printing workshops and youth development programs around the Pioneer Valley.
ArteSana Youth Studio began as ArteSana, a local nonprofit founded by Moonan. The organization began in 2013 while Moonan was teaching ESL classes in Holyoke, where she met several women who were interested in weaving and textile arts. Moonan and her collaborators began collecting used clothing and processing it into smaller fibers, which they brought to meetings to weave together. Soon the project became a community initiative, providing space and materials for local Latinx artists to make and sell their work. ArteSana ended its time as an independent nonprofit at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, but merged with Paper City Clothing Company the same year. While the pandemic led many small organizations like ArteSana to close their doors for good, Moonan was able to adapt through collaboration.
In its current state, ArteSana Youth Studio continues to provide professional development for artists, primarily teenagers in the Holyoke area. Peña has several clothing lines by teen artists for sale in his storefront alongside his own. In fact, the entire storefront was designed and built by artists in Paper City’s youth program. “When we first came in here, they took a look around and said ‘this is not a store,'” Peña told me one afternoon. They were referring to the future home of Paper City, which at the time was a cavernous brick building with uneven wooden floors, and most importantly, nowhere to display clothes. So Peña provided his collaborators with a budget, and they purchased the materials and pursued their vision under his guidance. They refurbished old wood into sleek black shelves and clothing racks with matching wall paneling, bringing new life to the space. The result is fresh and inviting. All of the money spent refurbishing was earned back through a sneaker mixer, an event planned and hosted by the youth collaborators.
“We give them a new direction to go into,” said Peña, as we chatted about what it’s like to be a young artist deciding whether or not to pursue art as a career. Such a career often seems intimidating, difficult to imagine, and for working class artists in particular, financially risky. Peña hopes to provide concrete guidance as to what a career as an artist might look like, how it is possible to be successful, and most importantly, that success comes in many forms.
The success of Paper City’s model, according to Moonan, is the fact that it is both a non-profit space and a storefront. Peña, Moonan, and their colleagues learned how to build a more substantial website with an online store for Paper City, a feature they had not needed before the pandemic. Like many cultural arts organizations, the revenue they earned came from face-to-face activities–in their case it was clothing merchandise for local events and even hosting parties and gatherings in their own space. In March of 2020 these events were all canceled at once. Within the month Peña and Moonan converted their space into a full-time screen printing production and packaging facility, and added all their merchandise into their online store, including that of other local designers. This sudden change in selling strategy was ultimately positive, allowing more customers who lived far away from the brick-and-mortar store to purchase new designs.
Recently Paper City began hosting in-person events again, which now have better funding thanks to the success of their online store. Peña has also created a gallery with rotating exhibitions by local artists. This spring they participated in the tri-site exhibition Abstract Black, alongside The Ethnic Study in Springfield and 50 Arrow Gallery in Easthampton. An upcoming exhibition of artwork by local youth artists will be on display beginning in May of 2022.
You can find more details about Paper City’s upcoming projects on their Facebook and Instagram, as well as their website. You can also shop their clothing lines here!