| WHO: | Melanie Walby of Good Graces Paper Company | ||
| SIGNATURE PRODUCTS: | Prints, glassware, magnets, journals, Clear Water coffee table book | ||
| WHERE: | Minneapolis, MN | ||
|
WEBSITE: SOCIAL MEDIA: |
@Good Graces Paper Co on Instagram, Threads, and Youtube, or subscribe to their Patreon |
By Millie Frankel, Staff Writer at Meet the Minnesota Makers
“I like challenging people’s definition of grace”
Melanie Walby sees beneath the surface. Take the name of her company, Good Graces Paper Co. At first, the story seems simple: “My middle name is Grace and I make printed goods,” Melanie begins. The name also describes the messages inscribed on the posters, notebooks, magnets, and glassware of Good Graces Paper Co. “Having grace for yourself is a constant theme throughout my work,” explains Melanie. “The art encourages taking care of the mind, body, and spirit, and from there it will trickle out into the world.”
Once grace becomes extended to others, it unlocks another layer of meaning. “Grace is actually really angry and confrontational,” says Melanie. “I equate it to nonviolence.” Similar to the sit-in protests that garnered sympathy for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, “I don’t see people being passive. I see people fighting back in a really strategic way that revealed the true villain and the undeserving victims,” explains Melanie. Grace is a tool that can be used to “make other people confront the ways that they are being inhumane, even when they see themselves as a good person,” says Melanie. “Grace is an anger that comes from love. It’s like saying, ‘I agree that you’re a good person. So prove it.’” 
The mission of Good Graces Paper Co. is just as multilayered as its name. First, the designs are crafted to speak to other Black women, giving them a place to express their anger and exhaustion while finding a way to maintain hope and healing. For those outside of the immediate audience, the designs seek to challenge– to spark curiosity and conversations that will lead people to learn more about the issues and histories of which they are uninformed. But even that isn’t the entire story: “I have some designs that are just pretty!” laughs Melanie.
Advertising for Change
Good Graces Paper Co. designs typically start as a response to a political, social, or interpersonal issue, from voting rights to Christian nationalism to personal grief. Melanie then edits her ideas down to a phrase or series of phrases, and turns them into an art piece with intricate floral patterning, metallic flourishes, or funky graphic design.
Behind the designs are years of training and work in advertising and media arts, which allow Melanie to accomplish her multi-faceted goals. “I was professionally trained to consider not just the audience, but the current attitude of my audience why they have that current attitude, and how to shape my messaging to get the audience to act on the call to action,” explains Melanie. Once she left advertising and began working at a nonprofit media arts organization, she learned to incorporate the concept of narrative change into her process. “Narrative change takes it one step further. It’s not just about the audience’s behavior and their current attitude, but also what are the narratives that have created their current attitude?”
Initially, Melanie didn’t set out to change anyone’s mind, but her
careful consideration of audience and narrative had an exciting consequence. “I have found that people who don’t agree with me also get something out of it. My designs are accidentally universal.” Now, she includes citations in her work, both to provide resources to people who want to learn more, as well as a reminder to her community that scholars have been writing and working on these issues for decades alongside them.
“Now instead of trying to sell a product, I’m trying to sell a heart posture,” Melanie shares. Good Graces Paper Co.’s designs seek to lay a common ground amongst people who care deeply about others and to challenge them to use that shared value to advocate for justice for the most marginalized.
Layers of Common Ground: The Clear Water Exhibit
To understand the meaning of common ground in Melanie’s work, one must return to the issue that sparked the first designs that became Good Graces Paper Co.
In 2019, Melanie was working full-time at Pollen Midwest and was selling her work at local art fairs like Art-A-Whirl. That year, a racist incident occurred at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.
Melanie has family in the Eau Claire area and watched the news coverage of the event. “I just remember being really frustrated that they were making it all about this individual student and not the culture that allows people to become an adult thinking jokes like that are okay,” she says. To confront this culture of white supremacy, she created the Clear Water Exhibit: an installation of 30 illustrations and designs which she displayed at U.W. Eau Claire in 2021. She was inspired by conversations with her sister. “I wrote it as though a Black woman is talking to another Black woman, and they’re having this private discussion,” says Melanie. “It didn’t center people’s curiosity or learning. It centered our healing and boundaries.”
By centering Black women’s experiences in her work, Melanie puts forth a more intentional version of common ground. “In private, we’re over here talking about how to hold onto basic emotions that
shouldn’t be so much work to grasp, like rest and joy,” says Melanie. “Common ground, for me, is that we have to all agree on making the world less violent to Black women. That’s not debatable. Once we do that, everything else that we want on this list is possible.”
The Clear Water Exhibit remains relevant. Melanie turned the entire installation into a coffee table book, while several individual pieces became prints that can be purchased on the Good Graces Paper Co. website. During Operation Metro Surge, people reached out to Melanie to tell her the Clear Water book helped them process the events in the same way it helped them process 2020. “It has the same impact regardless of the news cycle,” she says.
Change in Action: The Minnesota State Fair
Silver text printed on white paper. Words that disappear and reappear as you walk past. Designs that the viewer must move around, touch, and interact with in order to understand the full depth of meaning. Melanie’s designs are crafted to be viewed offline and in-person so that conversations can arise in real-time, whether it be a space of healing or a learning moment.
As a vendor at the Minnesota State Fair, Melanie sees her work create both types of change. “My booth feels like a different space. People walk in and I can just see them change their posture a little bit. All of a
sudden, they’re not at the loud fair anymore. They’re in this quiet little booth reading and studying.” But the impact of her designs doesn’t end there. “This will be my third year at the fair, and people are reporting back to me with their stories of how it worked. People will say, ‘I bought the book for my dad and he’s questioning Fox News.’ or ‘I have the Common Ground print up at my desk as a daily reminder.’”
Melanie’s work punctures ingrained narratives across the country, whether through anti-racist prints 
displayed in churches, or a particularly strongly-worded poster within someone’s home. One print that she sells in her shop displays an Ida B. Wells quote from 1893 which reads, “Those who commit the murders write the reports.” Melanie’s work moves beyond partisan messaging to show how history continually impacts the present, without sanitizing the truth. “People fight about the leaves on the plant that you can see sticking out of your garden. And my art is saying, no, that dandelion root goes deep. You can’t just cut off the leaves.”
Get in Touch
Order prints, magnets, glassware, journals, or your own Clear Water coffee table book at goodgraces.store.
Follow Good Graces Paper Co on Instagram, Threads, and Youtube, or subscribe to their Patreon to gain insight into the research that informs the designs.
Visit meettheminnesotamakers.com or follow @meettheminnesotamakers on Facebook and Instagram to discover the small business owners who make Minnesota an amazing place to be. Meet the Minnesota Makers is a news site that connects you to the local food, farms, artists and artisans that make Minnesota thrive.
