School of Communication senior Phoebe Ison brings her eclectic background to the digital communication arts major and KBVR-TV
Phoebe Ison
By Taylor Pedersen, CLA Student Writer - November 18, 2025
When Phoebe Ison talks about her art, she often circles back to light. The way it filters through moss in a North Carolina forest, glints off the Jersey Shore, or bends and fractures through the panes of her stained-glass work. Light, for Ison, is a metaphor for the way creativity passes through her life, refracted across mediums and places.
Now an incoming senior in the School of Communication’s digital communication arts program, Ison is stepping into her biggest role yet: station manager for KBVR-TV, where she has plans to expand the student-run station’s programming and deepen its creative reach. It’s a natural continuation of the path she’s carved at OSU, from producing The Lyrical Lounge, a poetry and performance program, to exploring the intersection of technology and artistry through film, set design, and media production.
But Ison’s journey here has been anything but linear.
Born in Pennsylvania, the second of seven children, she spent her early years bouncing between states—New Jersey, North Carolina, and Utah—absorbing the quirks of regional culture. In New Jersey, she recalls the bluntness of bagel shop banter; in North Carolina, the deep forests where she foraged mushrooms and studied rock quarries. “Those early experiences really gave me variety,” she said. “All the different colors, textures, and attitudes feed into my creative work.”
By 18, Ison had already graduated from high school early and set off on her own. She spent six months working as a cook at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Hancock Field Station in Eastern Oregon, a remote desert land dotted with refurbished cabins from the Rajneeshpuram religious community that lived there in the 1980s. She rose before dawn, managed budgets and menus, and cooked for dozens, then spent afternoons hiking through canyons and collecting deer bones. The experience, she said, gave her independence. “It was a project that cleared my mind and helped me understand who I was.”
When she arrived in Corvallis, she was undecided on a major, torn between science and art. Forestry and natural resources fascinated her, but left her discouraged. “I was leaning towards graphic and product design, but I kept thinking: do I want my creativity to be drained for corporations, or can I find another way to apply it?” she said. That “other way” came when she wandered into an Orange Media Network open house and found herself inside the KBVR-TV studio.
At first, she sat quietly, watching critiques of color palettes and lighting choices. Soon she was volunteering on shoots, learning technical roles, and discovering the fast-paced collaboration of television. “There’s such a steep learning curve, but it was exhilarating,” she said. “TV production stimulates my brain in so many different ways. I don’t get bored.”
Outside the studio, Ison has another passion: stained glass. Under the name The Underground Cathedral, she has been creating glass art since high school. For her, it’s not only craft but history. “Even though I’m not religious, stained glass has this power. It’s turned people toward spirituality for centuries,” she said. She finds inspiration in aerial views of farmland, mossy lakes, and the shifting colors of nature. “It’s the same mental process as film,” she explained. “Working with light, color, and texture to create something that moves people.”
Looking beyond graduation, Ison envisions herself working with creative teams in film or theater, somewhere between set design, cinematography, and production. She hopes to contribute to projects that feel both meaningful and innovative. “I love the intersection of art and technology that TV and film offer,” she said. “My goal is to make work that captures emotion, history, and humanity and to help shape an industry that desperately needs change-makers.”
For now, she has one more year at OSU, where she’ll guide KBVR-TV through its next season. Like her glasswork, her vision is about bending light into something memorable. “It’s all about capturing the most human product we can,” she said. “Something symbolic, something that matters.”