Ox-Bow Summer School of Art and Artists Residency

WRITING 603 001
From the Stage to the Page: a generative workshop
3 credit hours
June 8-June 21, 2008
Instructor: Beau O’Reilly

Dialogue and storytelling are the lifeblood of playwriting, fiction, and filmmaking, and essential corner stones for poets and performance artists, as well. We will spend a week generating responses through the use of dreams, gossip, folktales, photographs and songs; and writing from unusual places in and around Ox-Bow. Week two will be spent choosing one piece out of this material to perform\read aloud, rehearsing it, and then performing it one night at Ox-Bow for friends and fellow students..

PHOTO 601 001
Constructing the Natural and the Everyday
June 22-July 5, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructor: Melanie Schiff
$200 Lab Fee

In this course, students will approach photographing in nature by looking at the history of nature and landscape photography in the context of contemporary practices. The class will be looking at ways to document, reconstruct, and perform in the environment. This class will emphasize using the natural world to make images that are new and unfamiliar based on our own personal experience and art practice, rather than relying on traditional tropes. Looking at artists such as Ana Mendieta, Robert Smithson, Forcefield, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sally Mann, and Justine Kurland, students will investigate what it means to shoot and connect with nature in an authentic way. The course will be a challenge to approach photographing nature in new ways that integrates the environment into our projects both formally and conceptually. Time will be spent shooting and processing images, with demos, slide lectures, and critiques to supplement. Students must supply their own digital camera for this course. Inks will be included in lab fee.

SOUND 601 001
Sound Outside: Dialogues between Sound and the Environment
July 6-July 19, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructors: Mark Booth and Louis Mallozzi

Students will explore sound in the environment and the creation of responsive installation work designed for specific environments. Stressing an interrelated practice of observation, 
sound gathering, and contextual intervention, participants will explore the Ox-Bow landscape as soundscape (an acoustic environment of sound). Activities will include engaged listening exercises, sound gathering through field recording, and the arrangement of gathered 
sounds. Collaborative and independent projects will result in sounds re-implanted into the landscape by making site-specific outdoor sound installations that respond to existing spaces. Personal sound equipment is welcome but not required.

602 001 / MFA 601 001
Art and Environment (or Dynamic Flower Arranging and Getting with Animals)
July 20-August 2, 2008
3 credit hours
Instructors: Martin Basher and Arlen Austin
$50 Lab Fee

Students of an advanced undergraduate level are invited to join a lively two-week interdisciplinary course dealing with the intersection of art-making, social practice, and environmental philosophy. The emphasis of the class will be on creating site-specific environmental artworks, contextualized by historical and late 20th century strategies linking art and environment. The course will engage students as part of a learning community, with the instructors acting as participants: favoring the collective and collaborative as ways of learning, exploring, and making. The role of exploration and play within artmaking will be essential to the success of the course. In the first week, students will work in groups to make art that engages historical strategy with contemporary practices. Projects will include sandcastle earthworks on the Lake Michigan beach, model home construction, body art, sculpture making in the woods, and interactions with wildlife as artwork. The second week will see students building on the ideas explored in the first by developing individual, self-directed projects. Students should have an interest in making art in the environment, but no prior knowledge of environmental art practice is necessary.

FASH 602 001
Headwear Design: Straw Sculpture
August 17-August 23, 2008
1 credit hour
Instructor: Eia Radosavljevic
$100 Lab Fee

In this course students create headwear ranging from conventional to avant-garde using millinery straw in three different forms—flat yardage, braided, and traditional “hood” or “capeline.” Beginning with traditional techniques, students are encouraged to venture into non-traditional straw sculpting, inspired by the nature that surrounds them. Investigation and discussion of the historical, haute couture, functional, spiritual, or social roles of headwear will follow a visual presentation. No prior hand-sewing experience is necessary. The supply list is provided in advance, and more difficult to find source materials are provided by the instructor and included in the lab fee.

MFA 6009 003
Graduate Projects 1-week sessions throughout the summer for 1 credit hour
2-week sessions throughout the summer for 3 credit hours
Graduate courses taken for credit are subject to SAIC Graduate tuition rates.

UGDIV 4000
Undergraduate Projects
1-week sessions throughout the summer for 1 credit hour
2-week sessions throughout the summer for 3 credit hours

No Independent Study available August 3-August 16, 2008
Instructor: Philip Hanson

Available throughout the summer Independent Study is designed for those prepared to pursue their own projects. The beauty of Ox-Bow's natural setting encourages outdoor work. Individual guidance and group critiques are provided by visiting advisors, faculty-in-residence, and visiting artists. Requirements and objectives are determined according to an individual student's needs.

Graduate and undergraduate projects are most suitable for a current BFA or MFA candidate or recent graduates with a concentration in painting or drawing. Exceptions can be arranged with the consent of the Program Director.