Anna Gray and her partner, Ryan Wilson Paulsen, have worked together as one artistic entity for over ten years. They make project-based work that often focuses on the activities of reading and writing and the ways that we come to and through knowledge. Because they gravitate toward text, the sound of a sentence, the look of a paragraph, and the scaffolding of the book often form the basis for what they create. From visual indexes that catalog objects or colors in literary works, to large-scale participatory sculpture, and serial poster runs that engage viewers in correspondence and conversation—they use art as an extended form of study and a way to transform the often solitary act of reading into a collective one.
Utilizing a range of media and contexts, their pieces and projects have appeared in many public places as well as at institutions such as The Renaissance Society (Chicago, IL); The San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, CA); Locust Projects (Miami, FL): Camp CARPA (Joshua Tree, CA); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR); and on the pages of NOON Literary Annual. In recent years they have been artists in residence at Caldera Center for the Arts (Sisters, OR); Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE); Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland, OR); and in the Mt. Hood National Wilderness through Signal Fire's outpost residency program. The pair is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, OR.