PLAYA ALUMNI

Jim O’Connor (he/him) is a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Portland, Oregon. He is a Pacific Northwest native long interested in the processes and events that shape the remarkable and diverse scenery of the region. Following this interest with a Geological...

In love with the wilderness, and with the equally complex and lonely terrain of the human heart, Cedra Wood (she/her) makes paintings and drawings that marry the elements of both worlds in unlikely ways, creating narrative metaphors for humanity’s relationships with...

Hannah Perrin King (she/her) is a 2022-23 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA where she was the inaugural Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow. King is the winner of The Georgia Review’s 2020 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize as well as the winner of...

Anna Daedalus (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, installation and book arts. Her work draws upon deep ecology and phenomenology to respond to the enveloping plenitude and multiplicity of the more-than-human world. Her ongoing...

Isabella (she/her) is a neuroscientist and artist studying the neural basis of sensory perception. She received her B.Sc. from Florida International University, her Ph.D. from Tulane University, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University. She is...

Heather Goodwind (she/her) is a visual artist in Portland, Oregon. She has received awards, grants, and residencies from the Oregon Arts Commission, The Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Ford Family Foundation, the U.S. Department...

Bethany Laranda Wood (she/they) was born and raised in West Texas. She earned her BFA in Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing from Texas Tech University and her MFA from the University of Iowa. She is now a working artist in Cedar Rapids, IA. Her work has been featured in...

Originally from southeastern Indiana, Joshua White (he/him) received his BFA in Photography from Northern Kentucky University, and his MFA in Photography from Arizona State University. From cell phone photography and wet plate collodion to woodworking and mixed media,...

Alleen Brown (she/her) is an independent investigative journalist and a senior editor for Drilled. Her reporting on state and corporate repression of Indigenous-led Dakota Access Pipeline opponents at Standing Rock has been cited in civil rights cases, reports...

Alicia Jo Rabins (she/her) is a writer, musician, composer, performer and Torah teacher. The New York Times calls her voice “gorgeous”; the San Francisco Chronicle calls her writing “a poetry page-turner, both sexy and humble.” Alicia is the creator and performer of...

Mychelle (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist working from a sculptural base of clay. Her art explores the natural world, connection, loss, and mending as well as a fair bit of humor. Mychelle draws from observations, in-depth research, lived experiences, and...

Marne Lucas (she/they) is a Portland, Oregon based multidisciplinary artist and end of life doula (EOLD) whose practice spans photography, video, sculpture, and collaboration. Lucas places her work at the intersection of art, science and health, using conceptual...

Adriana Barrios (she/her) is a queer, multiracial Latina artist who grew up on the coastal borderlands of San Diego, California. Barrios received her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is a Master of Fine Arts graduate from...

Born in Danbury, CT, 1973, Melissa Desmond Mohammadi (she/her) currently works in Oakley, California. She earned a BFA with a concentration in painting and printmaking from Rhode Island College (Providence, RI) and an MFA from Southern Methodist University (Dallas,...

Based in Oakland, California, artist Adrien Segal (she/they) embraces elements of scientific rationality and human emotion to create forms that echo landscapes of the inner and outer world. Her work has been exhibited internationally since 2007 and is published in...

Khaila Batts (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of memory, identity, and cultural narratives within the Black American experience. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Brooklyn, Batts merges traditional and contemporary...

Erinn Kathryn (she/hers) is an interdisciplinary artist working in a range of media. She examines intersections of constructed and natural systems within which we exist, translating elements of cartography, topography, ecology and history into her art objects. Her...

Claire Fall Blanchette (she/her/hers) is an artist working across multiple disciplines including sculpture, printmaking, and drawing. Using organic and unconventional materials, Claire investigates the boundaries that humans have established between the built world...

Jerri Bartholomew (she/her) is an emeritus Professor of microbiology at Oregon State University and director of the JL Fryer Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory. She is also a glass artist who incorporates ecological and scientific imagery into her art, exploring how art...

Ania Upstill (they/them) is a queer and trans performer, theatre maker, teaching artist and clown. A graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre (ProfessionalTraining Program), Ania’s recent work celebrates LGBTQIA+ artists with a focus on...

Throughout her career, Dede Lucia's paintings has embraced nature culture as the primordial touchstone incorporating all systems of birth, growth, change, and death, fulfilling an existential call to both resistance and acceptance of life’s audacious purpose. Through...

Danielle Shi (she/her) is a writer from Dalian, China. She spent her formative years in Irvine, California, going on to study English at the University of California, Berkeley and the Humanities at the University of Chicago with W.J.T. Mitchell, focusing on Media...

Thomas Dai (he/hime) teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho. His first book, Take My Name but Say It Slow: Essays, will be released in early 2025. His writes primarily about the ambiguities of personal identity and its intersections with ecology, place,...

Edem Soul Music (Edem K. Garro, she/her) is a World-Class Vocalist, Performer & Multi-Instrumentalist currently living in Omaha, Ne. Originally from the East Coast, a large part of her music focuses on the ‘Creative content’ that comes from a place that can only...