PLAYA Alumni

Kelly Grogan received her MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles with a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Tishman Review, The Forge, Blue Earth Review, and Reed Magazine, among others, and was nominated for a...

I have been thinking about Nothing since I was six. I have never been thrown from a horse, but I have been bitten by angry creatures and clonked by a coupla flying objects. I am in love with meadows, maps, etymology, the moon. Poet, Wanderer, Homemaker, Listener,...

Ellen Adams writes essays, fiction and songs. As a teenager in Eastern Washington, one of her earliest jobs included Spanish interpretation at a cardiology clinic. Ferrying the conditions of patients’ figurative and anatomical hearts between languages confirmed for...

Elizabeth McLagan is the author of the poetry collections In The White Room (2013) and My Rothko, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Boulevard, L.A. Review, 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She has won an AWP...

Lisa Wells is an augur and performance artist living in Corvallis, Oregon. Her multimedia work mixes meditation, movement, videography, still photography, drawing and writing to create stories about place and people within place. She has a PhD in geology and has...

Artist MaryAnn Puls, creates paintings, drawings and assemblages in various mediums. Her work follows its own script with results that seem familiar, enigmatically attractive and although abstract, projects a certain reality. A need to understand draws the viewer to...

Martha Silano is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019), What the Truth Tastes Like (Two Sylvias Press, 2015), Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books, 2014), and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception,...

Paper, ink, beeswax, and thread tell the story of a place in Marilyn Joyce’s mixed-media works. Residing in Portland, Oregon, her interest in the natural world, joined with a walking practice, provide parameters for her art. Direct observation combined with felt...

As an artist, I curate information collecting images, textures and forms, physically and in my mind’s eye as I move through this world. In my current art practice I use fiber and mixed media to depict abstracted landscapes, obscuring and controlling viewpoints...

Daniel Mayer is an Arizona artist, educator, and fine press publisher who investigates the intersection of language and art resulting in artist’s books, experimental prints, and award-winning public art. Mayer’s personal studio works are a fusion of cultural identity,...

South African. MA Social Sculpture 2007. Member Galley 114 Co-op. Collaborations include GPSEN- Think Tank, SSRU- Agents of Change. Visual Art Practice Exhibited SA, USA, UK.

Lola is a creative producer and writer who has an intense fascination with the way that shifts in food culture reflect and influence larger cultural moments. The intersection of art, food, the environment, and public engagement is her favorite place to linger. She has...

Richie is an archaeologist who specializes in the first peoples of the Great Basin, with a particular focus on Oregon. Specifically, he studies stone tool technology, organization, and chronology to inform on broader cultural and social patterns, diversity, and...

Katelyn McDonough is pursuing her PhD in Anthropology at Texas A&M University. Her dissertation research bridges ecological and anthropological approaches to investigate how plant communities and human diets have changed over the past 13,000 years. Katelyn’s work...

Ingrid L. Taylor is veterinarian, writer, and poet who lives in Las Vegas with her Newfoundland dog, Winston, and her black cat, Olive. Her fiction has appeared Dies Infaustus, Legs of Tumbleweed, Wings of Lace: An Anthology of Literature by Nevada Women, Gaia: Shadow...

Emily Cohen is a multi-disciplinary artist with a background in ecological design and community planning.  She is intrigued at the balance between art and science, built and natural, chaos and order. Her focus at Playa involves creating a field guide to climate change...

Pato Hebert is an artist, teacher and organizer. His work explores the aesthetics, ethics and poetics of interconnectedness. He is particularly interested in space, spirituality, pedagogy and progressive praxis. His projects have been presented at Beton7 in Athens,...

I began making photographs of the landscape in Cape Cod at the age of 16. Growing up on a sparse, thin spit of sand surrounded by ocean anchored my spirit to the land. Driving west to school in San Francisco I was awed by the vastness of the American West. My feelings...

With a exciting background in ecology and fine art artist Shane Koehler has traveled the world teaching environmental education, designing and making environmental landscapes and creating wildlife conservation themed watercolor paintings. He has worked for notable...

Historian Tracy J. Prince, Ph.D. is a Research Professor at Portland State University's American Indian Teacher Program, a Fulbright Specialist (Malta), and the author of 4 books (Notable Women of Portland, Portland’s Slabtown, Portland’s Goose Hollow, and Culture...

Allen Braden is the author of a poetry collection A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood and a chapbook of poems Elegy in the Passive Voice. Former poet-in-residence for the Poetry Center and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he lives in Lakewood, Washington.

Owen Gump is a Bay Area-based visual artist working with photography and related media. His work examines the relationship between built environments and nature, focusing on the landscapes of the Western U.S. and their representation of cultural ideologies, past and...