A Cool Kid Kindred Tradition

A Caldera year-long program wouldn’t be complete without exploring the art of the graphic t-shirt: the process and the fun of wearing their designs are all parts of this perennial tradition. Photographed young learners proudly pose at the end of a graphic t-shirt workshop.

Scene of students stenciling their artwork outside Portland's Park Blocks. For the past decade, students have gathered for weekend art intensives hosted by Caldera's community partner, Portland Art Museum.

Students proudly interpret their version of the Caldera wordmark and amplify their creative expression in the process—a student experiments with a stencil and spray paint.

Illustrated here is the finalized product of a weekend's art intensive hosted at the Bodecker Foundation of Portland, Oregon, in 2019. This shirt was the result of combining the artwork of a dozen contributors into a final design for that year's summer program camp shirt.

For decades, a long list of talented artists have dedicated time to teaching Caldera's youth the tradition of screen printing. Each generation of students looks forward to learning technical skills and diving into the creative outlet this analog process offers.

For the most part, choosing the year's program t-shirt is not a competition; it's an organic communal process of selecting the coolest design. In the process, students learn craft, collaboration, and, most importantly, self-expression.