PLAYA Offers Arts the Gift of Time, Space, Solitude & Community for Innovative Research to Reflect & Engage Their Work

PLAYA (a Residency Program in Summer Lake), like the ephemeral lakebed is moving forward with renewed vigor, offering new opportunities for visual and performing artists, writers, scientists and others involved with creative research.

Playa (pronounced ply-uh) is the name for a dry lakebed. PLAYA, the organization is a non-profit facility whose mission is to support the arts, literature, natural sciences ad other fields of creative inquiry through its residency program.

Our main purpose is to provide individuals with the gift of time, space, solitude and community for innovative research to reflect and engage their work. Located in Summer Lake, a residency includes lodging, studio space and some meals at no charge.

It is a retreat for individuals who are committed and passionate about their work and who will benefit from time spent in a remote location. Playa offers seclusion and quiet in a spectacularly unique natural environment and the opportunity for interaction, if desired, with a cohort of residents and the local rural community. Away from the pressures of daily life, residents can focus on their projects, immerse in a desert landscape of basin and rangeland, and find inspiration through self-directed inquiry.

In addition, Playa also offers free public programs, educational activities, workshops and use of its facilities to those who live in Summer Lake, Paisley and greater Lake County.

Playa Presents, occurring one Saturday each month, are celebratory afternoons of studio tours, readings and presentations open to the public, providing a wealth of interaction with ground-breaking professionals from around the country. The next Playa Presents is July 26, from 4-6pm.

Beginning mid-July, PLAYA will host two invited groups of residents including photographers, sculptors, botanists, book artists, writers, and environmental studies scientists coming to PLAYA to experience and explore the landscape in, and some of the issues of, the Great Basin and the West. Landscape: Views from Within a conversation between artists, scientists and others amidst the landscape of Summer Lake about the role of humans in relation to the environment and ecosystems. Participants will have ample opportunity to create visual/verbal records of observations, while interpreting and responding to the changing landscape through poetry, visual art, essays or other forms. We hope to initiate a dialogue as a means to find deeper connections to community through the practice of art and science. Invited residents include:

Richard Wilhelm & Sue Arbuthnot, film makers (OR)
Roger Asay & Rebecca Davis, visual artists (AZ)
Terri Warpinski, photographer (OR)
Dan Mayer, printmaker/book artist (AZ)
Daniel Spencer, environmental studies (MT)
Carolyn Law, visual art (WA)
Lisa Floyd-Hanna, botanist, & David Hanna, environmental science (AZ)
Bea Nettles, photographer/book artist, (IN)
Sandra Dal Pogetto, painter (MT)
Michael Light, photographer (AZ)
Steve Kuehn, geologist (WV)
Ellie Waterston, writer (OR)