MEET THE WRAYS
Brianna Wray
Brianna Wray is a visual artist, musician, vlogger, videographer, a writer and storyteller. She is the resident photographer for the Walla Walla Foundry. She grew up in a military town in Tennessee until her parents divorced. At that point Brianna and her mother moved to Orlando, Florida. It was there her journey to visual arts began with an introduction to graffiti and acrylic paintings with a guerilla-style artist collective known as the B-Side Artists. They created paintings in full view of club audiences, during concerts, or outside face to face with collectors and haters alike. Her subject was nature, especially landscapes with trees.
Having always had a penchant for writing (won a contest in kindergarten), Brianna fell in with a bad crowd. The Orlando Poetry circuit. Will’s Pub for Speakeasy, Stardust for Broken Speech, Austin for Open Words. Eventually performance poetry and poetry slams took her to Austin, Texas for the National Poetry Slam. Upon relocating to Seattle in 2009, Brianna earned a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from the University of Washington. There she discovered a love for printmaking, mixed media assemblage, videography, and bookmaking as a means of enriching her other art interests.
Brianna’s current works are cumulative. There are traces of graffiti and landscapes, as well as poetry and abstraction. As in video, each still image functions as a part of a much larger story.
Matthew Wray | Non-Navigator
Matthew Wray is a digital audio engineer and signal flow junky. He graduated from Shoreline Community College’s Digital Audio Engineering program in 2003.
He has worked with bands and as an independent musician producing over a dozen unreleased solo albums. He has also worked for radio stations and venues as a live sound technician. Matt, the Plaid Scientist, is one half of Super Plaid. He’s as comfortable on stage as backstage. Matt is assistant manager at Hot Poop, Walla Walla’s Only Bing Bang Stereo Shop. He is a purveyor of all things music. Matt has worked as a store manager, tour guide, bartender, and a barista. He builds excellent campfires and ties many sturdy knots, but he doesn’t juggle.
Matt plays guitar, bass, piano, mandolin, banjo, sitar, drums, clarinet, harmonica, urhu, treholipee, and sings. He speaks fluent ProTools 6.4, and he does his own automation and programming stunts. Matt Wray is also the Non-Navigator.