Goldfish Crackers, Shelbie Loomis (2020)


Shelbie is a child of a single-parent. She wrote about an experience where she helped move her family out their step-father’s home when she was a youth.  The drawing below was down by Shelbie of a food she found as resource for her and her sister after they all left Shelbie’s step-father’s home. 

Letter from the writer:

I’ve known about the Single Parent Archive by Rebecca Copper and her collaborators since its origin. Due to recent events that are making our story public – I decided that I wanted to contribute to the archive my own experience of being a child of a single parent and how the experience changed my life. Through a recent conversation with my mom about our lives, I came to a realization that there was power in regaining our voices through telling our story of abuse, survival, and perseverance. I wrote this essay in 2020 not knowing what I wanted to do with it, then in 2022 I adapted and finished it for the archive.


-Shelbie Loomis



Shelbie Loomis (she/her) is a socially engaged artist, illustrator, and self-proclaimed economist who explores issues of class, labor/housing/food rights, and critiques economic systems of indentured servitude like debt. She explores these issues through the use of story-telling, archiving, drawing, and social organizing. Her socially engaged projects are a commentary on the subversion of labor norms, nomadic lifestyles through RV-ing, temporary housing, and self-sustainability through the growth of food. She is based in Portland, Oregon, and is originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

You can access Shelbie’s personal narrative here