(Photo courtesy of PLAYA)

PLAYA, in Summer Lake, enters its second year of support as one of the Ford Family Foundation’s Golden Spot Award recipients. “Golden Spots” are residency programs defined by a distinctive environment that artists repeatedly find stimulating. Other Golden Spot residency programs in Oregon include Caldera, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts and Pacific Northwest College of Arts (Leland Iron Works).

Fifty percent of the funding supports the residency program and the remaining funding provides stipends to the selected artists to help offset life and work expenses while in residence.

One of the goals of this program is to enhance the quality of artistic endeavor and body of work by Oregon’s most promising visual artists. Recent PLAYA recipients of this award include Michael Boonstra, Rebecca Welti, Jessie Rose Vala, Anne Connell, Diane Jacobs, Sandee McGee, Susan Murrell, Kathleen Caprario, Robert Tomlinson and Tallmadge Doyle. More recipients for spring and fall will be announced in the coming weeks.

A residency at PLAYA includes lodging, studio space and twice-weekly dinners with a cohort group of artists and scientists, at no charge. Free from the daily distractions, this opportunity provides the gift of time and solitude to focus on one’s work in an inspirational and remote location. For many artists, these opportunities impact their lives and their creative work in profound ways:

“This award allowed me to begin to develop a new direction in my work. It gave me financial flexibility to explore the landscape of Lake County and also opened up options for how this new work is formatted,” reports Michael Boonstra (Corvallis)

“My time at PLAYA activated the work on many levels and enabled me to realize a big leap in the development of my content. I established a new interest in geological history and how the landscape has altered over time, from both naturally occurring phenomenon and human interventions. It became clear to me the work was eveloving further in its message as a subtle form of activism and became aware of my intense interest in how art can change the conversation and the future of our pressing environmental issues of climate change,” says Tallmadge Doyle (Eugene)

These artists, along with the other residents from PLAYA, bring a wealth of cultural resources to Lake County through monthly community presentations and events such as PLAYA Presents. Information for Oregon visual artists and how to apply for this award can be found on PLAYA’s website www.playasummerlake.org. The next application deadline is March 1, 2017.