In a profile for 48 Hills, CCA alum Mary W.D. Graham discusses Value Test: Brown Paper, a series of oil portraits of Black women painted on brown paper bags. The work refers to “the paper bag test,” a practice that kept people with skin darker than the bag out of social clubs, colleges, and parties. Graham began the series in her first year at CCA, as she navigated being young, Black, and female in a predominantly white art school. From 2020 to 2022, she worked with BIPOC students, alumni, and faculty and staff unions on demands for racial and socioeconomic equity at the college, and with the administration to put them into practice. She credits CCA faculty members Kim Anno, Linda Geary, David Huffman, Bryan Keith Thomas, Christine Wang, and Karla Wozniak with shaping her practice. The profile also covers her 2024 solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora and her plans to begin graduate study at Columbia University School of the Arts.