Preserving History

“THRU THE HOLE in the wall Down Tooker Alley to the
Green Lite over the Orange Door,” read posters for the Dill Pickle
Club, a Chicago-based arts and culture center run by union organizer
Jack Jones from 1914 to 1934. Those through-the-rabbit-hole directions
were followed by a diverse demographic—from professors to hobos,
including folks like Sherwood Anderson, Emma Goldman, and Carl
Sandburg—who came to the Pickle for theater, debates, literary
readings, food, and more. While the Pickle was a diverse and vibrant
place, it ended with Depression-era financial problems and was quickly
forgotten.

And this is where the modern-day Dill Pickle Club comes
in—with a Portland transplant named Marc Moscato who decided to
revive the club’s history. Not only did Moscato write a chapbook about
the original Pickle (entitled Brains, Brilliancy, Bohemia: Art and
Politics in Jazz-Age Chicago), but he started a new organization in
its name, and with its original goal: to encourage discussions about
“art, literature, drama, music, science, [and] social or political
economy,” as Jones put it many years ago.

Since its inception in June of 2009, Moscato’s Pickle has had no
physical home, existing through chapbooks (the aforementioned history
of the Dill Pickle Club, as well as the self-explanatorily titled
Art for the Millions: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA), and what
Moscato calls “field trips”—outings that explore topics like “How
Are Things Made?” and “Where Does Food Come From?” But on Thursday,
December 3, the Dill Pickle Club will debut in a physical space: the
Eyeful Gallery at the Everett Station Lofts. The event marks the
opening of a temporary bookshop, as well as an art show featuring 24
established and emerging artists who were asked to take on the show’s
titular theme, Work | Progress.

The theme is well represented in the collaborative photographs of
Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen. In an untitled print, a young man
and woman—presumably Gray and Paulsen—stand in a garden.
The woman holds a placard with a photo of steak, while the man holds
one depicting potatoes. These artificial images contrast with the lush
garden, highlighting our distance from the work involved in food
production, while simultaneously questioning the progress implied by
industrialized food.

While Work | Progress is centered around this art exhibit and
temporary bookshop, in true Pickle form, it will also entertain various
fields of study and learning experiences. On December 13, Michael Munk,
author of The Portland Red Guide, will be leading a “walking
tour of [Portland’s] activist history”; a comedy night takes place
December 18; and Work | Progress closes on January 3 with a
dinner party that will feature presentations from bookmaker Matthew
Stadler of the Ace Hotel Publication Studio, among others.

While Work | Progress is a promising start, much of the new
Dill Pickle Club exists in the future. Moscato wants to establish a
permanent nightclub location to house lectures, music, art, and
whatever else the Picklers come up with. That’s at least a year out,
Moscato says, and $30,000 away from happening. In order to raise the
needed funds, Work | Progress doubles as a membership
drive—$30 for a six-month membership, $50 for a year, which gets
patrons copies of Moscato’s chapbooks, as well as first crack at
signing up for future field trips.