MFA Alumni Aya Bram and Allison Morton Collaborate on Artist Website

Aya Bram (MFA ’19) and Allison Morton (MFA ’17) were friends long before they started their MFAs in Creative Writing & Poetics at UW Bothell. The two met at Ringling College, where they studied the arts and collaborated on films and other projects. After graduation, Morton moved back to Washington to be near family and begin her MFA. The experience was such a positive one, she encouraged Bram to apply, bringing the two together again. Both have since graduated and continued to write, paint, draw, and collaborate, and at the end of 2021 they decided to meld their work and aesthetics to launch a shared artists’ website, Spectre Sequence. The title suggests some of the eerie and uncanny themes that permeate both of their work, which encompasses photography, painting, mixed media, and asemic writing.

Of their collaboration, Bram writes: “Ally and I have been friends for a decade and have shared a love of the weird. We started Spectre Sequence to be a home for our eclectic arts practices, with an emphasis on what we consider otherworldly.” According to Morton, “We’ve worked together for so long that our artistic practices naturally complement each other. We’re both interested in exploring similar themes and meanings in our work, but we work through contrasting mediums.”

The two have curated their work into four themes, foregoing the traditional route of categorizing by medium to instead encourage visitors to engage with Geography, Portraiture, the Ephemeral, and the Spectral—and all the ways these can be interpreted. Their hope for the website, where visitors can see and purchase their work, is to eventually expand into publishing zines and chapbooks and provide a place for other eclectic ghost artists. The process of creating Spectre Sequence has been a meditative opportunity for them to work together and encourage each other.

Bram is also a contributing editor to Snail Trail Press, with fellow alums Woogee Bae (MFA 2019) and Katelyn Oppegard (MFA 2018). Since graduating, Morton has published work in Poetry Northwest, Clamor, The Sonder Review, Peach Mag, and elsewhere.

Check out Spectre Sequence here, and catch a glimpse of the artists’ process (and lives) on Instagram and TikTok.