In early 2011 I had the pleasure of visiting Ox-Bow during a winter session attended by some twenty-odd young artists.  Some spent long hours pulling prints, while others used their time away from home to research models of intentional communities or utopias, essentially working to understand the underpinnings of the forum they found themselves a part.  As the Executive Director of Harold Arts, a comparatively modest residency program for working artists,  I have found myself on a similar quest. For the last five years I have been actively considering new structures for temporary communities assembled for the purpose of art-making.  I should also mention that much of this work for me has been a personal mission to continue my education in the arts outside of academia.  I’ve been interested in this work because I believe that success in the arts requires a critical engagement with a community (of artists). This relationship is more vital than any accolade, and it is Ox-Bow where many artists first find themselves immersed in creative collectivity.  

I arrived towards the end of the session, amidst students collecting their thoughts, reviewing multiples, and preparing conceptual dance parties in a final exchange of work and ideas.  As a visitor I felt so detached from the bonds which seemed to be accumulating that I couldn’t help imagine how it started.  So when asked to reflect on my experience in writing, I began to script what I thought would be an honest introduction to Ox-Bow for this batch of winter residents:

Today’s class will be held in the mess hall  concluding around bed time. You will eat, sleep and work alongside your peers and instructors.  For the next two weeks you may experience intimate sensations of community rarely felt navigating cold concrete blocks of your fractured campus.  These sensations may be inhibiting at first, but in most cases residents will find comfort in collectivity after only a few days.  It is here, Ox-Bow, where you will learn to build a fire.  Otherwise your responsibilities here will be minimal. For now it is your job to question the impetus for communal living, its beneficent qualities, and its inherent failures.  You will consider Ox-Bow itself as a sustainable model for collective living for the artists which enliven its studios.   

Neutrality has been established and will be maintained for your purposes, a forum for you to reinvent throughout your visit.  There are refrigerators and bathrooms in most every building.

 The people who plan these programs, look after your meals, and tend to the grounds  live among you, and like to squeeze in studio time when they aren’t picking up after you.  Many of these people are pioneers in other sorts of creative communities.  It is their belief in a kind of Utopia that brought them to their posts at Ox-Bow.  You will be wise to identify their dedication to providing a friendly forum for your ideas to unfold. These are the sorts of people who founded this place over a hundred years ago, artists who found refuge outside of the city and built a safe environment for cultural exchange.

There is a lake which is essentially invisible right now.  On the other side of this lake is a much larger lake, and on on the other side of it, is Chicago.   To be removed from the throes of student life in a major city should offer you the opportunity to reflect on these doings while refining your goals.  Residencies here and elsewhere are designed to be revelatory experiences, reliable avenues for personal and professional transformation.  Places where social divisions dissolve sometime after dinner.

You will find the others to be more human than you imagine.  Most likely, you will share a fundamental yearning for the environment you’ve  found yourself a part of temporarily, and so intimately gathered you will work together to contemplate the possibilities of a shared paradise .  There will undoubtedly be some small conflicts between you and your fellow guests, however, difference will be necessary in interrogating the cornerstones of collectivity.

-Joe Jeffers