Edge Effects
“Visit” the High Desert Via New PLAYA Anthology
It’s not the worst of pandemic privations, but I am suffering Great Basin withdrawal. Sticking close to home, I really miss visiting those beloved open spaces. No whiffs of sage and juniper after an evanescent rain. No hyperventilated vistas across rabbitbrush flats...
A Portable Power: Farnaz Fatemi
Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian-American poet, editor, and writing teacher in Santa Cruz, CA. She is a member and cofounder of The Hive Poetry Collective, which presents a weekly radio show and podcast in Santa Cruz County and hosts readings and poetry-related events. Her...
Unforeseen Twists and Rabbit-Skin Blankets: Katelyn McDonough and Richie Rosencrance
Katelyn and Richie, what led you to Playa? Two of our mentors did residencies at PLAYA and both recall their experiences with palpable adoration. Because of those accounts, we have daydreamed about coming to PLAYA for years but did not anticipate having the...
A Way to Be a Human Being: James Reed
James Reed is a South African visual artist currently living in Portland, Oregon. He holds a Masters of Art in Social Sculpture with distinction from Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom (2007). He works in diverse genres of visual art and social practice, much...
Timeless Works: Peter De Lory and Owen Gump
This September, photographers Owen Gump and Peter De Lory stayed at PLAYA in a collaborative residency. As they explored the high desert, as their studio walls filled with images they'd made on the playa and beyond, staff and residents alike felt privileged to view...
From Mauna to PLAYA: Lehuauakea Fernandez
Lehuauakea Fernandez is a mixed Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist from Hilo, Hawaiʻi. She has participated in several group shows in Portland, Oregon, most recently the 23rd Annual Recent Graduates Exhibition at Blackfish Gallery. Through a range of craft-based...
Pure Joy: Barbara Rockman
PLAYA alumna Barbara Rockman is the author of Sting and Nest, winner of the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and recipient of the National Press Women Book Prize. Her poems appear in numerous anthologies and journals including Calyx, Bellingham Review, Louisville...
Nine Days, Nine Wonders: Jozsef Devenyi
Jozsef Devenyi, recent alum of PLAYA residency program for artists and scientists, is a professor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He spent his nine-day stay updating an organic chemistry lab manual -- adding, revising, and reconducting...
Spreading the Wonder: Marilyn Joyce
Paper, ink, beeswax, and thread tell the story of a place in Marilyn Joyce’s mixed media works. Residing in Portland, Oregon, she finds that her passionate interest in the natural world, joined with a walking practice, provides parameters for her art. As Marilyn...
Specifics of the Goodness: Melanie Bishop
Author and PLAYA alum Melanie Bishop has a delightful Young Adult novel in the PLAYA library: My So-Called Ruined Life (2014). This "introspective page-turner" (Publisher's Weekly) was a top-five finalist for both the John Gardner Award in Fiction and Community of...