PLAYA ALUMNI

Laura Gibson is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, video-maker and writer based both in Oregon and New York City. She’s released five full-length records and various collaborative music, film, performance and writing projects. She currently releases music...

Framed by fragility, impermanence, and possibility, Christina Conklin’s artwork and writing consider our cultural responses to the compounding ecological and social crises of our time. She has an MFA from California College of the Arts, and her book on climate change...

Ingrid Taylor is a poet, science writer, and veterinarian whose work often deals with inherited trauma, land degradation, and our connections to our more-than-human kin. Her poetry has recently appeared in the Southwest Review, the Ocotillo Review, FERAL: A Journal of...

Karen Klinedinst a Baltimore, Maryland-based artist using photography to explore themes of place, nature and the environment. Inspired by 19th century landscape paintings of the Hudson River School and 19th century photo processes, she creates richly layered images...

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Navigation, 40 Weeks, Breaking, and most recently, Daughters, a series of persona poems in the voices of daughters of various characters from folklore, mythology, and popular culture. Her newest collection,...

A biologist gone rogue, Anneke Wilder’s visual art is based in a desire to communicate the astonishing intricacies and complexity of life on earth, inspire curiosity and reflection, and cultivate devotion to our human and nonhuman communities. Originally from rural...

David Naimon is a writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in Orion, Tin House, AGNI, and EcoTheo among many other places. He is co-author of Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing and hosts the literary podcast Between...

Mary Beth Coyne’s work and passion for the mountains has taken her to wild and remote places to practice architecture – locations have spanned a spectrum from Kodiak to Tokyo, Wyoming to San Francisco. She created her architecture practice in 2016, to more directly...

As a child, McKenzie Floyd often traveled with her mother, Bets Cole, on plein air painting excursions. Raised in the Willamette Valley, OR, she has since lived in California, DC, Idaho, Italy, and Scotland. She has come to know each of these places intimately through...

Bets Cole has spent the majority of her artistic career traveling and painting throughout the US and Europe in the plein air tradition. In the open air she studies the ever-changing landscape, recording both its vastness and its details. She is known for her...

Ingrid Wendt was born and raised in Aurora, Illinois, of German-speaking parents—a Chilean-born father and a Michigan-born mother—she earned an MFA in Writing from the University of Oregon, where she served as Managing Editor of Northwest Review. Her first book of...

Julia Hands is an editor and writer from Seattle. A Washington local, she grew up in the Seattle-area and earned her MFA in creative writing at Western Washington University. Maybe because she has always circled around where she grew up, as a writer she’s interested...

Hailing from rural Northern California, Amanda Thomas is a visual artist working in photography, painting, sculpture, video and sound. She works in the Art Department of the College of the Siskiyous, and is an Art Studio student at the University of California, Davis....

Michael Boonstra is a visual artist based in Oregon whose creative practice shifts between drawing, photography, installation, and sculpture. He is a founding member of Gray Space, a group of Oregon artists based in the Corvallis, Eugene and Roseburg areas who came...

Patricia Bailey grew up in a small town in Oregon. She now lives in a slightly larger town in Oregon with her husband and three cats. She spends her time hiking mountain trails, scribbling story ideas on sticky notes, and longing for a dog. She is the winner of an...

* Photo by Tender Heart Productions Bridgette Hickey is a multidisciplinary archivist exploring interspecies communication with her ancestors. She works in repetitive time intensive traditional mediums to weave fragmented and disembodied themes and materials. They are...

Sharita Towne is transdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR, born and raised on the west coast of the U.S. along I-5 —from Salem, OR, to Tacoma, WA and down to Sacramento, CA. She is a research based video artist and printmaker most interested in creating...

Ella Ray is an art historian, writer, and curator who produces texts, objects, and exhibitions that center Black artists and histories, archival material, and world-building practices. After graduating from Portland State University in 2018, Ella Ray mounted...

Melanie Stevens is an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is the creator of the graphic novel series, WaterShed, and the co-founder and co-curator of Nat Turner Project, a fugitive gallery space that provides funding and spaces for artists of color to create or...

Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work explores the black female body as both subject and material through...

Ariella Tai (b. 1987 Queens, NY) is an experimental filmmaker, artist, video editor and independent programmer currently based in Portland, OR. tai is one half of “the first and the last,” a fellowship, workshop and screening series supporting and celebrating the work...

Alan Page (a.k.a. [sic][redacted]) (b.1987) is a new media artist who focuses primarily on glitch art as a means to interpret the physical and verbal ambiguity in everyday communication from both the animate and inanimate. Through mixed physical media, intentional...

Shelley Jordan is a Portland, Oregon-based painter and moving-image artist who explores interior and exterior worlds and connections between past and present experiences. She uses traditional drawing and painting media applied to two-dimensional artwork, animation and...