McKenna Blaine (she/her) serves as the Resource Access Specialist at JOIN PDX. She is also an artist with a B.A. in Studio Art from Creighton University. She lives in a community of eight Jesuit Volunteers in the historic Mac House of what is now known as Portland, OR’s Piedmont neighborhood on the unceded ancestral homelands of many indigenous people, including the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, and Molalla tribes.
Through the course of her service year, McKenna has found opportunities to reflect on and express our movement’s core values through her art. She created the works Mac House and What Was Carried and shares the inspiration for these pieces:
The linocut print depicts our JVC home in Portland, a place that has become central to my experience of community, growth, and compromise. I created two editions of this print (so far). The first, titled Mac House, is printed on white Fabriano Rosapina paper, presenting our home in a clean, straightforward way. The second edition, What Was Carried, is printed on recycled paper grocery bags, allowing the material itself to participate in the meaning of the work.
The house is shared by eight JVs and has been home to several generations of volunteers before us. It feels deeply lived in, not because of the scuffed floors, softened couch cushions, or chipped dinner plates, but because of the memories held within its walls, shaped by daily life unfolding together. Layers of shared meals, laughter, hard conversations, and the process of becoming. In many ways, the structure of the house in Northeast Portland mirrors the structure of our community: supportive, perfectly imperfect, and ever-evolving. Creating this print became a way to honor the physical space that has shaped and sustained us, while also embodying our community’s commitment to living closely and intentionally with one another.
The paper bag edition extends this symbolism further. By printing on reclaimed grocery bags, What Was Carried speaks to one of JVC’s core values, simple living. Using the everyday, typically discarded material reflects resourcefulness and an awareness of consumption. At the same time, I sourced many of the printmaking materials secondhand from SCRAP, a local nonprofit dedicated to creative reuse and environmental sustainability through affordable materials and education. Choosing sustainable methods within my practice became a way of embodying social and ecological justice rather than simply referencing it. This piece is both a portrait of our home and a reflection of the values that shape life within it. The walls have held us as a community, and through this print and its materials, the care, growth, and connection shared within these walls are carried forward.
