Keen as folk: GRL GRP
What do students do after graduation? An MFA in Design is not just an accolade—it is the foundation of how we work and connect in the world.
In spring 2024, I spoke with alum Kate Greenberg (BFA Furniture 2020), who reminded me that while we often seek out community, it's just as important to build it ourselves. This idea came to life in conversations with three collaborative design studios formed during the MFA Design program at CCA—groups that found each other through shared values, creative energy, and a love of making. Their stories, often rooted in mutual support and long hours of joyful work, frequently mention faculty member Luca Antonucci, whose course on hybrid business practices has inspired many students to forge their own paths through publishing, residencies, teaching, and beyond.
Abigayle installing during the San Pablo Mural Project in collaboration with If/Then
GRL GRP is the collective design practice of Ashlyn Jackson, Abigayle Cosinuke, Chloe Looker, Meg Quarton, and Sarah Chieko Bonnickson (all MFA Design 2021).
“We formed GRL GRP right after graduating in 2021. We were still primarily online (pandemic quarantine), and I sent a text to Chloe, Sarah, Abigayle, and Meg saying that I loved the community we had built together and did not want to lose that at graduation,” says Ashlyn. Chatting over text and in person at If/Then, a studio started by CCA faculty member Sara Dean. “We started by asking: what is a collective and how do we want to show up in this space we are creating for ourselves?” says Ashlyn. “Someone mentioned girl groups of the '90s and early 2000s and how that vibe and aesthetic is within our style. Someone said, ‘How about GRL GRP?’ and it was a resounding “yes” from everyone.”
“Someone said,” and “resounding yes” are patterns in how they work. They play unique roles, they take turns, they pass work around, and let it evolve. “Meetings sound a little like an improv group,” says Ashlyn, laughing. “None of us have an ego about it, we are basically just yes-and-ing everything, not stopping the flow. Yet it’s not chaotic, and the quality is there.”
Materials for the Headlands Design Fellowship, GRL GRP 2024
The GRLs talk every day. They all work outside of the collective. They live, teach, and design all over the globe. They share in a way that “is outside the capitalist patriarchal model of professional life that I grew up thinking about,” reflects Abigayle, adding that, “It’s empowering to know so much about the people that I’m working with. It’s a new framework for professionalism.” When we spoke in 2022 after the workshop with CCA DMBA’s Women in Leadership (WIL), we talked about the tendency of women to deepen our voices at work, to hide details of our personal lives, to try to fit the sound of what we think will be taken seriously. “Feeling like you don’t have to put on your ‘work voice’ to get real work done,” is the culture we’ve created at GRL GRP,” says Chloe.
“Femme Ephemera,” Installation at Fault Radio in 2024
They make community, they make ephemera and durable goods, and they make opportunities. Recent projects range from the GRL GRP calendar to wine labels, workshops, and murals. “We get tapped for things that are with women, for women, by women,” says Ashlyn. Somebody is the project manager—they run external communication and stay on top of deadlines. At first it was explicit; it would start with, ‘who can take this on?’ From there, they all touch it. “We do a ton of screenshots and chatting in Slack,” says Ashlyn. The generative chain of one thing becoming another, both materially and through collaboration, is an important part of their aesthetic. Scraps, remnants, foraged materials, and old work all can be found collaged and woven into later projects.
Here’s the thing about the GRLs, and it was true in school too: they get a lot done. Their keenness manifests in kinship, and also materially. The “sometimes-annual calendar,” Sarah explains, “grew out of a way of working that began back in Year 0 studio, where some of us were inspired by a very hands-on, iterative, and collaborative way of making during a crafting session led by our instructors Mary Banas and Ana Llorente. This way of working continued to develop throughout grad school, and was a founding value of GRL GRP.”
Abigayle installing during the San Pablo Mural Project in collaboration with If/Then
The group has continued to work for CCA post graduation, including the posters and branding for the Spring 2022 Design Lecture Series, and the collaborative workshop with DMBA’s Women in Leadership team. They held a workshop for Professor Sara Raffo’s undergraduate graphic design class in 2024. “In our time working together since graduation, we have needed to collaborate increasingly online and digitally. The workshop that GRL GRP ran for Sara Raffo's class represents a synthesis of these modes of working, combining analog and digital collaboration and iteration, with the ethos of using previous work as a generative starting point,” says Sarah.
Exhibition Identity for KADIST by GRL GRP, 2024
Right now, the GRLs are working on a website and schema for CCA’s Design Futures Lab, as well as the branding for CCA’s Reunited: Women to Watch exhibition. The exhibition includes 12 accompanying zines printed with Luca. “Luca was a clear choice; we’ve done work with him, we trust him,” says Ashlyn. The GRLs also regularly have a table at the SF Art Book Fair.
2025 saw a retreat for the GRLs at the Headlands Center for the Arts as part of the Design Fellowship there. When Chloe and Ashlyn each applied individually, the center saw the GRP work in their portfolios and proposed that the collective take on the Fellowship as a team. They produced four projects around exhibitions and events, and had a one-week stay, hiking, cooking, writing, and enjoying time together.
Other recent projects include branding the KADIST’s exhibition: A Woman You Thought You Knew. “I was thinking about the way that representations of women’s bodies can turn into a repetition, hourglass-type imagery that anonymizes. Riffing on that idea of shapes, triangles, circles and such, wondering if basic shapes could be used to individuate and identify instead of blanket categorize,” explains Ashlyn. By turning and mixing shapes, they created an icon for each artist in the show and that became the theme of the branding. Although this particular notion started with Ashlyn, it quickly grew in the group conversation. “Presenting to the group can be nerve-wracking,” admits Ashlyn. “It’s a little like making a baby, then saying ‘what if we all raise this baby together?’ We don’t arrive with fully formed ideas, we bring things to the group early, we all touch it, it needs to be still in the talking stage so that it can be everyone’s.” Chloe adds, “we like to make something, in community.”
At Fault Radio the GRLs were invited to design the space. “We went with a ‘teen girl bedroom’ theme,” says Ashlyn of the installation Femme Ephemera. They brought images of women in music, along with other materials, and went into the space together. “We started collaging the space, each of us working on a wall, then rotating, overlaying each other’s work, in the end we all touched every wall. It was like Figma, but in real life.”
— Saraleah Fordyce, professor of Critical Studies and MFA Design
May 01, 2025
