The Transparent Self: Working in Glass 

with Minami Oya and Nate Watson
$500 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Exploratory

Glass embodies a fluidity, range, and nuance well suited to expose the truths that every person holds. Through a series of material inquiries and personal reflections, we’ll find the methods by which the stories that define us can best be made visible through glass. This workshop will examine the qualities that make glass such a powerful mode of expression and help students refine an honest and natural relationship with the material. We'll cover a range of foundational techniquesm, including basic glassblowing, adhesives and assemblage, color application, basic coldworking, and sculpture techniques. A balancing of traditional and nontraditional processes will help you access the expression that comes from a harmony between you and the material. Through a series of short lectures, brief writing assignments, and thoughtful experiments, students will come to understand the range, immediacy, and responsiveness that glass can offer the creative process. Instructors will introduce contemporary artists like Vanessa German, Tavares Strachan, Fred Wilson, Team Lab, and many more who mine the material of glass in wildly different ways to alter how we observe the world and how we envision ourselves within it. Experiencing and reflecting on the material in its purest form while constantly checking in with how we tell our own truths through short writing prompts, we’ll consider where the language of glass and the stories that make us overlap. Ultimately, we’ll seek a merging of ourselves with the making process in a way that allows for our truths to melt into the spaces where we live and work and create together. The course begins with students responding to a series of writing prompts designed to produce short autobiographical excerpts. These expressions of self-reflection are to be presented, discussed, and distilled into personal methodologies for approaching glass. Inquiry is the mechanism for refining individual paths in this course, as each unique story is transformed into a series of experiments and challenges through which each student builds a foundational understanding of how glass works.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code GLASS 666 001. 

Minami Oya (she/her; b. Japan) is an artist, glassmaker, and educator whose practice employs glass and mixed media as metaphorical instruments and encompasses installations and works on paper. Her work has been shown in solo and juried exhibitions in the United States. Oya discovered her deep passion for glass in 2008 at San Francisco State University and has trained with maestros in studios such as Pilchuck Glass School, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the Corning Museum of Glass, and D.F. Glassworks, Murano, Italy. She holds an MFA in Spatial Art from San José State University and has taught at several institutions, including California College of the Arts, San José State University, and Public Glass.

Nate Watson (he/him) is a visual artist and cultural organizer. Watson has lectured nationally and held teaching positions at San Francisco State University, California College of the Arts, and the University of Washington. His transdisciplinary practice ranges from photographs, architectural interventions, and poetic imagery to collaborations with the collective Related Tactics, investigating and producing creative projects, opportunities, and interventions at the intersection of race and culture. His projects have been exhibited and supported by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; the University of San Francisco Thacher Gallery; Berkeley Art Center; the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery at Parsons School of Design, New York; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco; the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; the Tacoma Museum of Glass, WA; the Institute of Contemporary Art San José, CA; and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Before embarking on his graduate degree at California College of the Arts in 2004, Watson received a BA in History from Centre College and was awarded grants from the Rhode Island Foundation and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts for his work investigating intersections between immigration, labor, and craft traditions. In 2012, he co-founded Light-a-Spark, a collaborative glass-focused arts program that provides rare opportunities and resources for youth in marginalized communities in San Francisco.

Woodfire: Ancient Methods & Contemporary Applications 

with Henry Crissman & Virginia Rose Torrence
$300 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Communal

This course will explore the many histories, methods, and potentials of using wood as fuel to heat and transform clay into ceramic. Presentations will survey ceramic science, the history and logic of kiln design, and the range of objects made with wood fired kilns. Demonstrations will include handbuilding and wheel throwing techniques as well as experimental methods with found ceramic materials and objects. Films and readings including Maria Martinez: Indian Pottery of San Ildefonso and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, will offer insights as we engage and form the material of the Earth. Conversations throughout will aim to assist students in finding creative agency with ceramics. Students will work on independent projects and the class will culminate in a nearly two day long firing of Ox-Bow’s 50 cubic foot catenary-arch wood-kiln; a massive group effort that will involve loading the kiln, and methodically stoking it with wood for the duration of the firing until our desired temperature is reached throughout. While the kiln cools we’ll explore ways in which the techniques covered might be applied outside of the workshop, and build and fire a small and temporary kiln which students could easily recreate independently. Once cool, the big kiln will be unloaded and cleaned, results will be finished and analyzed, and we'll hold an exhibit of the works created.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 660 001. 

Henry James Haver Crissman (he/him) is an artist and educator who thinks of his art as a means, not an end. Together with his wife and fellow artist, Virginia Rose Torrence, he co-founded and co-directs Ceramics School, a community ceramics studio and artist residency in Hamtramck, MI. He regards teaching as an integral aspect of his creative practice; in addition to teaching at Ceramics School, he is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Studio Art and Craft department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Crissman earned a BFA in Craft from the College for Creative Studies in 2012 and an MFA in Ceramics at Alfred University in 2015.

Virginia Rose Torrence (she/her) teaches at Ceramics School, a community ceramics studio and artist residency in Hamtramck, MI, which she co-owns and operates with her partner and fellow artist, Henry Crissman. Her art practice encompasses pottery and sculpture. She received her BFA in Craft/Ceramics from the College for Creative Studies in 2013 and her MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University in 2016.

Muraling at Ox-Bow 

with Alex Bradley Cohen and Chris Johanson
$175 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Communal

In this class, students will have the opportunity to design, propose, and implement a large outdoor mural that will beautify and celebrate Ox-Bow. Visible from the main entrance road into campus, the mural will greet all visitors and participants. Students will learn strategies for planning, drafting, scaffolding, and collecting supplies for their collaborative mural. The class will draw inspiration from the style and signage of Ox-Bow and consider the work of muralists Diego Rivera, Ben Shahn, Seymour Fogel, Thelma Johnson Streat, Keith Haring, and Bernard Williams, among others. In the first few days of the course, students and faculty will work together to design three proposals, to be reviewed and approved by Ox-Bow's leadership team. The remainder of the course will center on the implementation of the selected design.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PAINTING & DRAWING 605 001. 

Alex Bradley Cohen (he/him) utilizes painting to visualize the push and pull of political life. Working with acrylic paint on canvas, Cohen depicts friends, family members, and himself in scenes that foreground everyday moments. Originating from personal photographs and memories rather than direct observation, each painting serves as an exercise in imaginative world-building. Recent group exhibitions include In Relation to Power: Politically Engaged Works from the Collection, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; and Triple: Alex Bradley Cohen, Louis Fratino, and Tschabalala Self, University Art Museum, University of Albany, NY. His work has also featured in exhibitions at venues including the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; and the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow.

Chris Johanson (he/him) is a multimedia artist whose wide-ranging practice spans painting, drawing, and sculpture using wood, metal, fabric, and paper; building a small house; sound installations and music performance; writing music; publishing zines and books of his own work as well as work by others; curating; producing music and performance events such as the Quiet Music Festival in Portland, OR; and creating numerous murals, some with the participation of young people. A college dropout, he has shown his art internationally for many years, including as part of the Whitney Biennial. Recent projects include paintings or installations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and de Young Museum, all in San Francisco, as well as a gallery exhibit at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland. He has made many monographs, including one with Phaidon, and is the recipient of a SECA Art Award from SFMOMA.

Wandering Spirits 

with Joseph & Sarah Belknap
$175 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Exploratory

What does it mean to make an image? In this course we will make images and photographs using the Earth’s Sun in collaboration with photographic techniques that emerged in the 1800s and continue to be used in contemporary art. We will play with digital photography, anthotypes, cyanotypes, chlorophyll prints, and other alternative photographic techniques. We will utilize photography, drawing, painting, and collage to make images with depth, vibrancy, and wildness. Our images will be experienced through virtual worlds and platforms as well as physical spaces of the home, communities and other locations through posting, installing, inserting, publishing and other possible ways where images can be transmitted. The acceleration of image production has transformed our understanding of ourselves by folding the horizon in on itself. We will look into phenomenological studies of being while making images that examine our contemporary conditions of the power within our lives that these images can serve, deconstruct and reinvent. From social justice, deep fakes, intimacy, ecology - the political impact of images shape our existence. While we look at contemporary and historical image making we will look at ways of seeing. Artists will include Anna Atkins, Kiki Smith, Candice Lin, Zadie Xa, and Dario Robleto. Readings and screenings for this course will include Rebecca Solnit, Susan Sontag, Jean Painlevé, Sara Ahmed, and Hito Steyerl. Assignments will invite students to respond to the reading and viewing of Hito Steyerl’s work How Not to be Seen and create a series of images using the Cyanotype process. We will also consider the perspective points of the viewer and the processes of concealment that make this object or subject hidden in plain sight.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PHOTO 615 001. 

Sarah Belknap and Joseph Belknap (they/she and they/he) are partners, interdisciplinary artists, and educators. Playing with pareidolia and mythology, their work draws on the cosmos, deep time, conspiracy theories, science, and speculative fiction. Working as a team since 2008, they have had art exhibited in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Detroit, Columbus, Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Oleśnica, Poland. In addition, they have presented performances, public programs, and workshops at institutions throughout Chicago, including the Chicago Cultural Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Links Hall, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Their work has been shown in many group exhibitions and solo shows, including at the San Francisco Art Institute Galleries; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; The Arts Club of Chicago; the Chicago Artists Coalition; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Comfort Station, Chicago; and the MCA Chicago. Their work has been published in journals such as Afterimage, the Chicago Tribune, and books including, most recently, Weather as Medium by Janine Randerson, part of the Leonardo Series through MIT Press (2018).

Casting the Body & the Everyday

with Soo Shin
$250 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Skill-building

In this introductory course, students will obtain technical skills and a fundamental understanding of mold-making. Using the techniques learned in class, students will experiment with various ways to capture the everyday and the body while examining personal symbolism, rituals, and the border between art and daily life. Students will practice imprint, ready-made object, and body casting through four exercise projects using clay, plaster, slip, alginate, silicone, and resin. The class will look into art movements in history, such as Arte Povera, Neo-Dada, and Fluxus, via lectures to find the lineage of the everyday in visual art. We will discuss the practices of artists such as Ian Breakwell, Sarah Lucas, Gabriel Orozco, David Altmejd, Liz Magor, Cornelia Parker, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and many others, to consider various possibilities of materials, objects, and rituals to trace the everyday. Readings will include Joseph Kosuth’s, “Art After Philosophy and Selected Writings, 1966-1990 (Part II: Theory as Praxis: A Role for an ‘Anthropologized Art’)”, MIT Press. Students will develop their final project using one of the four exercise techniques. Students are encouraged to adopt the natural environment of the Ox-Bow campus as their new everyday and explore it as the source of pattern materials for their molds. Assignments will include inviting students to consider sculpture as a means of recording, creating a new daily routine that involves Ox-Bow's surroundings. Using imprints of materials and traces from it they will cast the imprints into several plaster blocks. Students will also cast a body part in a symbolic gesture. Incorporating found materials, objects, or sites of your choice with your work to create five sculptures or installations as a final project.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 690 001. 

Soo Shin (she/her; b. South Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist who employs a diverse range of materials—ceramic, brass, concrete, wood, and seawater—to evoke themes of connection, spatial displacement, and longing. She is the recipient of a fellowship at Djerassi Artist Residency, an Individual Artist Grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and the Vilcek Foundation Fellowship at MacDowell. Shin’s work has been presented at The Luminary, St. Louis, MO, as well as Chicago venues including Patron Gallery, Goldfinch, Chicago Manual Style, LVL3, and Chicago Artists Coalition. She has completed residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Vermont Studio Center, Art Farm, and Ox-Bow. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and both a BFA and an MFA from the Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.

Soft Compositions

with Chris Edwards and Lauren Gregory
$175 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Communal

This course celebrates handicraft and invites students into the sewing circle in service of solving compositional problems with the language of quilting. Serving students at all levels of experience, participants will learn traditional, nontraditional, machine, and hand-sewing techniques to produce soft objects including quilts, banners, windsocks, dolls, and installations. Demonstrations on mapping 2D and 3D images, piecing, applique, dyeing, and additive image making will encourage the exploration of the alternative and whimsical sensibilities in soft sculpture. Platforming the loose and improvisational mark-making possible with traditional stitch and applique techniques of quilt-making, this highly collaborative and social course will be inspired by the works of Rosie Lee Tompkins, the Gee's Bend Quilters, Claes Oldenberg, RuPaul, David Byrne, and Lee Bowery. Screenings may include True Stories (1986), Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), and readings may include “Knitting, Weaving, Embroidery, and Quilting as Subversive Aesthetic Strategies: On Feminist Interventions in Art, Fashion, and Philosophy” (Michna 2020). Students will conceive and construct original fiber works in response to assignments that focus on the expressive, personal, and comical possibilities of these materials. Assignments will include completing piecing, construction, binding, and quilting of a full personal quilt project, collaborating on group textiles, even with artists in other classes, and students will make a wearable item for Ox-Bow's Friday Night Costume Party. The course will culminate in a group quilt show installed in the landscape.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code FIBER 627 001. 

Chris Edwards (he/him) is an artist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker. In his artistic practice, he works primarily in quilting, ceramics, and puff paint. He has taught variations of the class Soft Compositions with Lauren Gregory at Ox-Bow since 2022. He has exhibited work at Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Ox-Bow House, Saugatuck, MI; Wrong Marfa, Marfa, TX; Elephant Gallery, Nashville, TN; and Adds Donna, Tusk, LVL3, Oggi Gallery, Dreamboat, and Julius Caesar, Chicago. He received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and his Master of Social Work from the University of Iowa in 2014.

Lauren Gregory (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose practice bridges painting, animation, and quilting, exploring storytelling and the interplay between tradition and technology. Initially trained as a portrait painter, she later taught herself stop-motion animation to bring her paintings to life. In recent years, quilting—a craft she learned as a child from the matriarchs in her family—has become central to her work, particularly as she integrates digital imagery and internet culture into this age-old form. Since receiving an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gregory has created GIFs, looped video installations, and animated shorts that have screened at MoMA PS1 and the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Frist Museum, Nashville, TN; and film festivals worldwide. Her directing work includes commissions for the Washington Post and music videos for Leonard Cohen, Norah Jones, James Taylor, Sarah McLachlan, and Toro y Moi. She teaches animation at Parsons School of Design in addition to quilting at Ox-Bow and is represented by Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville.

Starving Artist: Financial Care in a Capitalist World

with Falaks Vasa
June 4–19 | 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. ET | Exploratory

In this online performance-based studio course, we will explore the intersections of body, gesture, and screen as tools to unravel the trope of the starving artist and explore pathways toward both material and psychological abundance through a queer, anti-capitalist, interdisciplinary lens. Through readings, discussions, and workshops rooted in performance, institutional critique, and collective experimentation, students will investigate how artists stage, embody, and disrupt systems of value and exchange. Together, we’ll explore how queer approaches to care, redistribution, and collectivity can reimagine abundance beyond material wealth. We’ll look to artists such as Andy Warhol, Maurizio Cattelan, and Monét X Change as models for how we can reveal and subvert the institutional and financial structures that shape our lives. Assignments will translate these ideas into multidisciplinary studio projects rooted in performance. Students will complete two major works: a visual art project that maps financial realities and emotional economies, and a conceptual work of institutional critique informed by class discussions. By the end of the course, students will also produce a practical financial plan for their future and a portfolio of studio work that situates their practice in dialogue with the histories and strategies explored in class.

 SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PERFORMANCE 610 001.

Falaks Vasa (they/she; b. India) is an interdisciplinary artist with a set of practices that are continually moving in and out of definition and obscurity. Their work spans video, performance, fiber art, poetry, photography, 3D animation, stand-up comedy, and more. Vasa’s lived practice currently takes the shapes of artist, writer, and professor. As an artist, Vasa has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and ACRE and shown their work internationally. As a poet and author of speculative fiction, she has had work published by the Unnamed Zine Project. As a professor, she enacts her pedagogy as creative practice and has received the Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence from Brown University. Vasa currently teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design as Visiting Assistant Professor and at Rhode Island School of Design as Lecturer and Critic. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

Let’s Paint Online

with John Kilduff
June 4–19 | 2:30–5:00 p.m. ET | Exploratory

Join legendary painter and performance artist John Kilduff—best known for his exuberant live-streaming persona Mr. Let’s Paint—for a wild, high-energy dive into painting, performance, and process. In this experimental course, students will learn how to set up a home studio for both painting and streaming, transforming their creative spaces into dynamic sites of art and action. A highly interactive course, students will be expected to have their cameras on during class sessions as they participate in real-time painting challenges and group activities that emphasize spontaneity, humor, and endurance as pathways to creative freedom. Materials can include any combination of oils, acrylics, watercolors, spray paint, markers, musical instruments, canvas, paper, cardboard, blank t-shirts, or caps—students are encouraged to work across multiple media and make their studios as dynamic as the performances themselves.

Situating Kilduff’s practice within a lineage of performance-based and process-oriented painters, this course draws inspiration from artists such as Allan Kaprow, Carolee Schneemann, and Bob Ross—figures who reimagined what it means to make and share art in public. Through this lens, students will examine how painting can exist as both a live act and a broadcast, dissolving the boundaries between artist, audience, and environment.

Assignments will include a full calendar of alternative painting exercises—painting while cooking, running on a treadmill, or singing. Students will also venture into their local landscapes to create rapid-fire paintings of shifting scenes and moving subjects. The course will culminate in a final performance built around a painting idea–celebrating the intersection of art-making, movement, and play. Students should plan to work with a computer or phone and free streaming software such as OBS (while Kilduff uses Wirecast, a paid option, free tools are encouraged).

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PERFORMANCE 612 001.

John Kilduff aka Mr. Let’s Paint (he/him) is best known for the cable access TV show Let’s Paint TV, where he combines painting with performance. His first love in art was plein air painting, something he has done for over 40 years. Today, Kilduff goes back and forth between these two disciplines in the making of his art. He received a BFA in Fine Art from the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in 1987. Following graduation, he became interested in performance and took acting and improv classes at Los Angeles City College and the Groundlings. After doing some movie background work, he started doing cable access TV in 1995. His first show was titled The Jim Berry Show; in 2001, he started Let’s Paint TV. In 2008, Kilduff graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited and performed all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.

Perfumery and Glass-Cast Vessels 

with Emily Endo
$500 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

This class will introduce the process of casting hollow-core glass vessels and the fundamentals of fragrance construction. Part one of the class will introduce the process of creating cast glass vessels using an adaptation of the core-forming process. Techniques covered will include basic hollow-core mold making, wax sculpting, and firing schedule development. The second section of the course will guide students through perfume formulation, structure, material families, extraction processes, and blending. Participants will work with aroma molecules and high quality botanical essences. Each student will leave with their own custom blended alcohol based perfume and cast glass vessel. The histories of perfume and glass have been intertwined since their inception in the ancient world. In addition to technical demonstrations, this workshop will explore the historical and conceptual intersections between glass and perfume. The class will discuss contemporary artists who fuse olfaction, glass, and mixed media within their work such as Sissel Tolaas, Katie Paterson, and Candice Lin. Readings and screenings will include excerpts from Fragrant by Mandy Aftel, Ancient Glass by R.A. Grossmann, and Perfume on the Radio by the Institute of Art and Olfaction. Assignments will include sculpting a vessel using shape, color, and ornamentation to reveal or conceal the vessel’s contents and create a perfume that tells a story through its ingredients.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code GLASS 652 001.

Emily Endo (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose practice pulls from the disparate, yet conjoined, histories of science and mysticism. Using glass, organic media, and aroma molecules, their work references the transformative relationships between body, material, and space. Within Endo’s work, the visual, cultural, kinesthetic, and chemical qualities of materials are considered so that they complement and contrast one another in harmonious tension. Endo received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006 and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2010. Their work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Somerset House, London; Massey Klein Gallery, New York; Marta, Harkawik, and Neutra VDL House, Los Angeles; LVL3, Chicago; Bullseye Projects, Portland, OR; and the Byre, Latheronwheel, UK. Recent press includes coverage in the New York Times, Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, Variable West, Dezeen, Frontrunner, American Craft, LVL3, and MAAKE.

Ox-Bow on the Wheel 

with Liz McCarthy
$250 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

In this course, students will use the potter’s wheel to create thrown forms. Through practice and demonstration, participants will hone skills to successfully build scale and refine pieces in clay. Pre-Columbian work will provide insight, as well as contemporary artists which may include Shio Kusaka and Betty Woodman. Demonstrations will focus on centering, producing uniformity, and glazing techniques. Through assignments including throwing many pots in succession, students will become familiar with the disposability and ephemerality inherent to the medium and aim to master its spontaneity. This class will culminate in group critique and is open to students of all levels.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 656 001.

Liz McCarthy (she/they) is an artist who combines ceramics, often in the form of playable whistles, with other media. Her work explores the body as an ever-changing material intertwined with human and nonhuman environments, often drawing from feminist and queer themes. She is the founding owner of the GnarWare Workshop ceramics school and teaches in the Ceramics Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Most notably, she has exhibited/performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, Goldfinch, Roman Susan, and Epiphany Center for the Arts, all in Chicago; Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles; and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. She has participated in residencies at locations including Atlantic Center for the Arts, ACRE, Banff Centre, Ox-Bow, and Lighthouse Works and has received support from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She holds a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and an MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago.

Blacksmithing: Sculptural Forms 

with Natalie Murray
$250 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

This intensive will start with the fundamental techniques of forging, and move quickly into more advanced projects. We will focus on the processes of moving material while hot, and the forge and anvil will be the primary tools of achieving form. As a corollary, the history of forged ironwork (architectural, tools, and sculpture) will serve as a source of inspiration. Each student will also be encouraged to make an inflated sheet metal sculpture.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 672 001.

Natalie Murray (she/her) is a sculptor and fabricator. Her work has taken her from her Midwestern roots all the way to the largest women’s university in the world, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to build some of its first makerspace facilities. Murray is currently based in the US, working in large-scale, custom metal fabrication serving a variety of industries around the globe. In addition, she teaches welding classes, including the Women in Welding course at the Arc Academy. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hanji Unfolds: Traditional Korean Papermaking 

with Su Kaiden Cho
$175 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

In this hands-on workshop, students will explore the ancient Korean art of hanji, a traditional craft that transforms mulberry bark into beautiful, durable paper. For centuries, hanji has been an integral part of Korean culture, used in applications ranging from calligraphy and interior design to fashion and contemporary art. Through guided instruction, students will learn the process of preparing natural fibers, forming sheets, and drying the paper. The work is highly tactile and physically engaging, reflecting the labor and rhythm central to traditional papermaking. This class emphasizes both traditional techniques and modern adaptations, encouraging participants to create custom papers that reflect their personal aesthetic while connecting with the deep historical and cultural significance of hanji. Students will also be encouraged to consider how papermaking can intersect and collaborate with other mediums, including ink drawing, printmaking, and weaving with natural fibers. This workshop will explore the historical and contemporary significance of hanji, with special emphasis on its use in art and design. We will study the work of renowned hanji artist Lee Seung Chul, whose innovative installations and sculptures push the boundaries of this traditional material, and Yang Sang Hoon, known for intricate, geometric compositions that merge craftsmanship with modern abstraction. Readings will include selections from Hanji Unfurled: One Journey into Korean Papermaking by Aimee Lee, which offers a comprehensive look at hanji traditions. A screening of the film Hanji (2011) by Im Kwon-taek will further illuminate the material’s enduring cultural relevance. Students will create layered hanji artworks inspired by Lee Seung Chul’s installations or geometric compositions influenced by Yang Sang Hoon’s abstraction. As a final collaborative project, the class will work together to produce a large-scale hanji sculpture for the Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency, celebrating the medium’s expressive and communal potential.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code FIBER 608 001.

Su Kaiden Cho (he/him; b. South Korea) is an artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation, exploring the intersections of Eastern and Western diasporas. His work is deeply rooted in phenomenology, engaging with the interplay between the visible and invisible, often through material studies and spatial explorations. Recently, his focus has shifted toward postminimalist approaches, experimenting with monochrome and color-field compositions, with an emphasis on texture and dimensional surfaces. Cho’s practice reflects his ongoing investigation into absence, presence, and the uncanny. He earned his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now serves as an educator, holding a teaching fellowship at SAIC. His artistic achievements include prestigious residencies, fellowships, and awards, including a residency at the International Center for the Arts in Umbria, Italy, led by Michelle Grabner, and the Ox-Bow Summer Residency in 2024. Cho has exhibited in over 20 solo exhibitions and more than 40 group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.

Painting in Dimension: Abstraction, Representation, and Collage 

with Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Jennifer Rochlin
$175 lab fee | June 14–27 | Exploratory

This course investigates painting as a spatial and dimensional practice. Participants will examine the interplay between abstraction and representation while extending painting into relief and three-dimensional form. Collage serves as both source material and conceptual framework—borrowing images and ideas from the world, disrupting dominant narratives, and constructing new meanings through layering and juxtaposition. Through a series of projects, participants will move between surface and structure, exploring how cutting, assembling, and building can transform the painted image into sculptural space. The course emphasizes experimentation, material exploration, and critical dialogue, offering students the opportunity to expand their understanding of what painting can be. We will discuss paintings that have been made in the expanded field, considering color, line, composition, form, beauty, and content beyond traditional painting materials. We will take inspiration from artists who have experimented with unexpected materials, whose pieces have stretched onto the wall, and use three dimensional forms. We will look at the work of Ann Truitt, Michalene Thomas, Cady Noland, Rachel Harrison, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, and Cauleen Smith, among others. Likewise, we will glean inspiration from artists who have used collage to rupture methods of looking, including Hannah Wilke, Jess, Frida Orupabo, Wangechi Mutu and the films of Robert Bresson. Assignments will prompt participants to explore where meaning emerges in their work—through materials, imagery, and personal connection. Participants will bring personal items, forage for materials across the Ox-Bow landscape, and build a sculpture or relief using paper-mâché, cardboard, and wire as foundational structures for painting. To quickly generate energy and begin thinking through form, students will create four to six collages during the first few days. Following a mid-session critique, participants will develop a final project consisting of two to three experimental, sculptural paintings that integrate their discoveries in material, process, and meaning.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PAINTING & DRAWING 607 001.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins (she/her) produces sculptural installations, assemblages, paintings, and large-scale ceramics that often transform everyday household objects. She has had solo exhibitions at Columbus College of Art and Design, OH; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; the Hepworth Wakefield, UK; the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI; and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. Significant group exhibitions include Makeshift at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, where Hutchins first premiered her performance work; the 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace; and the Whitney Biennial. Her work has been incorporated into public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Margulies Collection and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the Portland Art Museum, OR. Hutchins holds a BA in Art History from Oberlin College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jennifer Rochlin (she/her) trained as a painter and took up ceramics as a way to expand her painting practice into three dimensions. She uses terra-cotta clay to hand-build vessels in coil and slab methods, creating familiar forms that echo the long history of ceramics. Undulating with dents and bulges, Rochlin’s vessels reject direct homage, however, in favor of suggesting the unpredictable, beautiful variance of human bodies. Her brushy, expressive gestures in underglaze and glaze reside both comfortably alongside and in contrast to the sgraffito drawing method she also employs. Rochlin’s work has been featured in group exhibitions at venues including Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles; Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, CA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, WI; 356 Mission, Los Angeles; Gamble House, Pasadena, CA; Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento, CA; Deitch, New York; Vito Schnabel Gallery, New York; and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Chicago. The recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Belle Foundation and the Durfee Foundation ARC Grant, she has had solo exhibitions at galleries including Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels; Hauser & Wirth, New York; Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Paris; Shrine, New York; The Pit, Los Angeles; Maki Gallery, Tokyo; and Lefebvre & Fils, Paris. Her work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC. She holds a BA from the University of Colorado Boulder and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she participated in an exchange at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Textile Ecologies: Pattern, Printing & Place 

with Isa Rodrigues and Ricki Dwyer
$175 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

In this course, students will explore textile patterning through eco-conscious surface design techniques. Working with nature as inspiration, material source, and collaborator, students will engage processes such as natural dyeing, mordant printing, cyanotype, and paste resists to create patterned textiles. Special attention will be given to observing natural systems and working with the sun, water, and wind as active agents in the creative process. Through field observation, experimentation, and reflection, students will develop a personal visual language rooted in ecological awareness and collaboration with the living world. We will consider how principles of community, regeneration, and ephemerality inform textile practice, studying the work of Ana Mendieta, Yto Barrada, and Maria Elena Pombo. Readings will include selections from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and In Pursuit of Color by Lauren MacDonald, which together frame material practice as both an artistic and ethical inquiry. Assignments will guide students in designing and producing a series of patterned textile samples and one final project that integrates natural processes as both technique and conceptual framework. Technical demonstrations will be paired with discussions on sustainability, care, and responsible practice, supporting each student in building a process that is both materially and environmentally responsive.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PRINT 636 001.

Isa Rodrigues (she/her) is a textile artist and educator. Through research and practice, her work explores how textiles can serve as archives of our experience of the natural world. She is also interested in craft education as a means to create community and preserve material culture. A founding member of New York’s Textile Arts Center, where she worked as Co-Executive Director from 2015 to 2021, she also founded the project Sewing Seeds (2010–15), activating natural dye gardens in empty lots and community gardens in Brooklyn. She is currently a co-lead for the Textile Dye Garden at Pratt Institute and a collaborator of The Mothership, an eco-feminist project by Yto Barrada in Tangier, Morocco. Rodrigues teaches textile techniques and materiality at Pratt Institute, Ox-Bow, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Textile Arts Center, among others.

Ricki Dwyer (he/they) explores how textiles can inform and strengthen our sense of embodiment. A recipient of the Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, the San Francisco Artist Grant, and the San Francisco Queer Cultural Center’s Emerging Scholars Award, Dwyer has had solo exhibitions with Anglim/Trimble, San Francisco; Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania; and Volume Gallery, Chicago. In 2022, he participated in the Biennale de Lyon in collaboration with Nicki Green. He has been an artist-in-residence at Jupiter Woods, Textile Arts Center, ARTHAUS Havana, the Kohler Co. Pottery and Foundry, and Yto Barrada’s The Mothership. In 2024, Dwyer was a Bronx Museum AIM Fellow. He received his undergraduate degree in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design and his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Dwyer currently teaches with Parsons School of Design.

Multi-Level Glassblowing

with Ché Rhodes
$250 lab fee | June 28–July 4 | Skill-building

This multi-level course offers an immersive exploration of glass as both a material and a language for sculptural and functional expression. Building on existing glassblowing skills, students will expand their fluency in the technical foundations of glass blowing and hot-sculpting processes. Through a balance of guided instruction and independent experimentation, participants will explore ways to manipulate form, texture, and transparency—pushing the material beyond traditional vessel-making into content-driven expressive, conceptual, and site-responsive works. Demonstrations, lectures, and critiques will complement extensive hands-on studio time, encouraging both refinement of technique and a personal voice in glass.

Throughout the course, we will consider artists who have expanded the field of contemporary glass through experimentation, narrative, and cross-disciplinary practices, such as Toshio Iezumi, Jessica Julius, Josiah McElheny, and Stephen Cartwright. These examples will frame discussions around how material, process, and concept intersect, and how glass as a medium continues to evolve within sculpture and design. Historical overviews of studio glass movements and contemporary installation practices will provide students with broader context for their own creative inquiries.

Assignments will encourage students to integrate skillful exploration with conceptual intent. Students will submit a series of responses to technical and intellectual prompts designed to make them consider what glass is as a substance, why they are using it, and how it can be used to support their creative or conceptual investigations. They will also complete a final project which will use glass as a tool to manifest the original content of their work.

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code GLASS 641 001.

Ché Rhodes (he/him/they) is Professor and Head of Glass Art at the University of Louisville’s Allen R. Hite Art Institute. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor and Head of Glass Art at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A former member of the Glass Art Society Board of Directors, he is a current member of the Crafting the Future Board of Trustees and the Penland School of Craft Board of Trustees. Rhodes demonstrated at the Glass Art Society Conference in 2006, 2010, and 2015 and has been an instructor at the Penland School of Craft, Pilchuck Glass School, The Studio at Corning Museum of Glass, UrbanGlass, and the Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti, Venice, Italy. He is a recipient of the James Renwick Alliance for Craft Distinguished Educator Award, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY. He received his MFA from the Tyler School of Art and his BA from Centre College, where he began his career under the mentorship of Stephen Rolfe Powell.

Field Illustration

with Josh Dihle
$100 lab fee | June 28–July 4 | Skill-building

Inspired by the landscape and wildlife of Ox-Bow, this class invites students to develop an illustrative portfolio in pencil, ink, watercolor, and gouache. Students will build effective and inventive travel easels to explore campus and, working both outside and in the studio, will develop a personal approach to rendering and responding to the plants and animals that call Ox-Bow home. Demonstrations will cover methods for effective color mixing and composing in the field as well as techniques for recreating botanical structure, basic animal anatomy, and biological textures including bark, shell, and feathers. We will review the work of John James Audubon, Walton Ford, Evelyn Statsinger, and Kiki Smith and students will carry a naturalist pocket guide for reference. Onsite and studio drawing assignments will be accompanied by readings and discussions of naturalist poetry by Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, and Sharon Olds. Assignments will challenge students to notice the nuance in nature and will include a bug hunt, with invertebrates sketched in graphite, and a watercolor assignment that gives visual expression to a work of poetry or literature. Students will be encouraged to propose a final project inspired by their observations.

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code PAINTING & DRAWING 678 001.

Josh Dihle (he/him) has a hand for detail and an eye on the natural world, blending painting, carving, and drawing to open visionary portals into the heart. He co-founded the experimental art platforms Color Club and Barely Fair and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He also created The Sugar Hole, an ice cream shop staffed by puppets. He has had solo exhibitions at venues including M+B, Los Angeles, and Andrew Rafacz, 4th Ward Project Space, McAninch Arts Center, and Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago. Dihle’s work has been exhibited in group shows nationally and internationally, including at Gaa Gallery, New York; MASSIMODECARLO VSpace, Milan; the University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; Essex Flowers Gallery, New York; Ruschman, Mexico City; and Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy. His work and curatorial projects have been written about in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newcity, Artspace, the Washington Post, and The Art Newspaper, among others.

The Nature of Mokuhanga: Modern Japanese Woodblock Printing

with Mary Brodbeck
$100 lab fee | June 28–July 4 | Skill-building

Mokuhanga, or woodprint, is the modern Japanese term for woodblock prints made with traditional Japanese tools and materials, a process that flourished from the 17th through the 19th century. Students in this class will learn the time-honored methods and techniques of Japanese woodblock printmaking in a contemporary way. Focused demonstrations will feature wood carving, kento color registration, watercolor printing, and pressing with a handheld baren. Design prompts may be provided alongside Japanese design, aesthetics, and process books, including Arthur Wesley Dow’s Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color and April Vollmer’s Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop. Students will view examples of mokuhanga, including historic process prints and contemporary Japanese pieces. Additionally, the class will screen Mary Brodbeck’s 35-minute documentary, Becoming Made (2014), in which artists Annie Bissett, Yoshisuke Funasaka, Tuula Moilanen, Richard Steiner, April Vollmer, and Karen Kunc share their insights into this process and the nature of creative work. Focusing on the process, students will be assigned to create an edition of 10 prints of their design that incorporates two or more colors. Students are encouraged to bring a preliminary drawing of their desired image, designed to fit within a 7-by-10-inch matrix (9-by-12-inch paper size).

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code ​​PRINT 674 001.

Mary Brodbeck (she/her) is an artist, educator, and nature enthusiast who has specialized in mokuhanga (traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking) for over 25 years. Her ethereal, nature-inspired woodblock prints mainly depict scenes from the Great Lakes region. Initially trained in industrial design (BFA, Michigan State University), she began her career in the West Michigan furniture industry. She took her first woodcut class at Ox-Bow in 1990, marking the start of a new direction. She subsequently studied woodblock printmaking in Tokyo on a Japanese government Bunka-Cho Fellowship and earned her MFA in Printmaking from Western Michigan University. Her works are now part of numerous public, corporate, and private collections, including the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; and the Muskegon Museum of Art, MI. Brodbeck has taught mokuhanga workshops across the US, in Canada, and in Japan.

Imaginative Armatures & Alternative Covers 

with Jessee Rose Crane
$250 Lab Fee | June 28 – July 4 | Exploratory

In this hands-on sculpture course, students will build three-dimensional armatures and cover them with a range of materials that reflect their individual ideas and aesthetics. Working in Ox-Bow’s Metals Studio, participants will fabricate skeletal frameworks from wood, metal, and found or natural objects, then experiment with unconventional surfaces such as hot glue, foraged materials, and recycled scraps. Through demonstrations in welding, joinery, and finishing, students will learn to balance structure and play, creating expressive forms that merge intuition, resourcefulness, and personal narrative. Slide lectures and discussions will connect students’ projects to a lineage of artists who have redefined sculptural form and material. We will examine the organic abstractions of Barbara Hepworth, the accumulative constructions of Leonardo Drew, and the monumental playfulness of Niki de Saint Phalle. Additional context will include the collaborative experiments of Black Mountain College and approaches ranging from the minimalist clarity of Brancusi and Mid-Century Modern design to the maximalist abundance of Nick Cave and Allyson Mitchell. Readings and screenings—such as Taking Imagination Seriously (Janet Echelman, 2013) and Design and Play: The Story of Charles and Ray Eames (Dave Buck, 2021)—will expand our understanding of design, sustainability, and emotional resonance in sculptural work. Assignments will invite students to experiment with scale, texture, and conceptual layering through two main projects: one three-dimensional self-portrait and one abstract sculptural design. Both will emphasize the use of personally meaningful or repurposed materials as a way of exploring identity, memory, and form. By the end of the course, students will leave with a deeper understanding of structure and surface—and a set of imaginative, unconventional sculptures that embody Ox-Bow’s spirit of invention and play.

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 697 001.

Jessee Rose Crane (she/they) is a multidisciplinary sculptor, arts administrator, and musician. Her approach to sculpture joins technical skills with a creative process that encourages play and embraces art in the everyday. Her practice combines steel with various media to craft both functional objects and conceptual experimentations used in exhibitions, videos, and live performances with her band Glow in the Dark Flowers. Crane received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is the Director of Rose Raft, an artist and musicians’ residency and analog recording studio founded in 2015, and has taught several metals/sculpture classes at Ox-Bow over the years. She takes joy in giving students ample individual attention and holistic support.

Global Papermaking: Techniques & Play 

with Megan Diddie & Aya Nakamura
$100 Lab Fee | June 28–July 4 | Exploratory

This course will focus on Eastern and Western papermaking techniques. We will work with cotton and abaca fiber and use molds and deckles to explore watermarks, embedding, and pigments, and we will also process Kozo fiber from start to finish in order to make washi, or Japanese paper. Participants will practice the steps of papermaking while discussing the mechanics and science behind them. By the end of the course, students will be able to play with the techniques and materials the class provides and ideally forge their own individual paths to paper. We will discuss paper's historical roots and contemporary uses in art; readings will include Dard Hunter’s The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft and Anish Kapoor’s “Silence and Transition,” and a mid-class lecture will introduce the work of contemporary papermakers and artists like Hong Hong, Zarina Hashmi, and Yoonshin Park, among others. We will briefly advise students on how to set up a simple home studio, so that they can expand on what they have learned beyond the classroom. We would like to emphasize that papermaking is a communal endeavor, and that collaborating with fellow classmates will be helpful when troubleshooting or executing assignments. Along with completing each day's tasks, including clean up, students will be asked to produce a final project. While these projects need not be completely finished, students will present their ideas and the steps they have made towards creating these pieces to the class.

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code FIBER 635 001.

Megan Diddie (she/her) embraces the process of making as a way to tap into deeper, calmer states of mind. Her work describes relationships between human bodies, plants, landscapes, and built environments. Drawing is at the heart of her practice, serving as a language to work through ideas, anxieties, and the unconscious. Her video and animation serve as an extension of her drawings, allowing her to complicate and refine stories. Diddie co-founded Switch Grass Paper alongside collaborator Aya Nakamura. This mobile papermaking studio explores local fibers and the role they can play in artmaking while also bringing papermaking to the Chicago public. She received a postbaccalaureate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Aya Nakamura (she/her; b. Japan) is a visual artist invested in craft, drawing in time, and abstraction as a relational medium. She has shown at venues in the United States and abroad, with recent shows at Western Exhibitions and Secrist | Beach, both in Chicago. Other venues include The Hangar and Dawawine, Beirut, Lebanon; Supa Salon, Istanbul, Turkey; Mana Decentralized, Jersey City, NJ; MPSTN, Fox River Grove, IL; Heaven Gallery, Chicago; the Research House for Asian Art, Chicago; and the Merwin Gallery at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington. She is a recipient of the DCASE Individual Artists Program grant from the City of Chicago, the Denbo Fellowship from Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, and the George and Ann Siegel Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds a BA in Fine Arts and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Nakamura is represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago.

Make An Ox-Bow Movie 

with Scott Reeder
$100 lab fee | June 28–July 4 | Exploratory

In this collaborative, hands-on course, students will write, shoot, and edit short experimental films inspired by the Ox-Bow landscape that explore storytelling through image, movement, and sound. Working individually and in small crews, participants will learn the fundamentals of camera work, lighting, editing, and sound design while embracing the improvisational and resourceful spirit of independent filmmaking. Students may use any type of camera—including phones—and will have access to a studio equipped with free editing software. The class will emphasize play, experimentation, and the power of collaboration—celebrating the DIY energy that defines Ox-Bow’s creative community. We’ll look at a wide range of artists and filmmakers who merge performance, humor, and fantasy to challenge traditional cinematic forms, including Jacolby Satterwhite’s digital dreamscapes, Mika Rottenberg’s absurdist labor worlds, and Shana Moulton’s surreal explorations of self-help and desire. Additional screenings may feature Julio Torres, Miranda July, and Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), alongside documentaries such as Divine Trash, It Came From Kuchar, and Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis—films that highlight collaborative, low-budget, and experimental approaches to cinema. Assignments will invite students to experiment with form and process. In FOUND, students will create a 1–3 minute video using found footage or audio to generate new meaning from existing materials—exploring remix culture, collage, and the poetics of recontextualization. In ACTION, they’ll make a short video that foregrounds movement through performance, choreography, or dynamic camera work. Finally, in FAKE, students will construct a 1–3 minute film using artificial or handmade elements—painted backdrops, thrifted props, or miniature sets—to build imaginative, performative worlds. The course will culminate in an end-of-session screening where students share their finished films with the Ox-Bow community, celebrating the collective energy of making movies together.

SAIC students: This is a 1.5-credit course; use the course code FILM, VIDEO & NEW MEDIA 612 001.

Scott Reeder (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist who uses deadpan humor and cultural critique to expose the absurdity of life. His newest series draws from the traditions of still-life painting to project emotional affect and social relationships onto inanimate objects. Reeder first became known for his text-based paintings and parodies of process painting, as well as for his feature-length improvised sci-fi film Moon Dust and his possibly ironic art fairs (The Milwaukee International and Dark Fair). Solo and two-person exhibitions include shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy; and Jack Hanley, San Francisco. A monograph on Reeder’s work titled Ideas (cont.) was published by Mousse in 2019. Reeder is an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Eating the Object: Ceramics, Food & Performance 

with Luka Carter
$250 lab fee | July 13–25 | Communal

This course invites students to experiment with a range of ceramic techniques—including handbuilding, wheel throwing, and surface design—to create both vessels and sculptural objects. Working collaboratively, the class will produce a collection of functional wares to be used in a culminating experimental dinner and performance. Alongside this collective effort, each student will develop an independent project in which a sculptural vessel is activated through performance and the serving of food. Rather than treating ceramics solely as utilitarian or decorative, students will investigate the ceramic object as a site of inquiry, interaction, and activation. We will critically examine the intersections of ceramics, performance, and social practice, asking how objects can embody participation, refuse utility, or generate new forms of meaning. Course material will draw from artists and movements that foreground food, ritual, and audience engagement, including the performances of Alison Knowles (Fluxus) and the surrealist objects of Meret Oppenheim. We will also consider frameworks from Relational Aesthetics and contemporary craft theory. Readings will include “Craft and Its Writing as Collectivized Outsider” by L. Autumn Dagner, and screenings will feature Les Blank’s documentary Garlic Is As Good as Ten Mothers as a lens into food, culture, and performance. Assignments include producing a collaborative dinnerware set for the culminating performance, producing the evening including building a menu, as well as an individual project in which a sculptural vessel is activated through food or ritual.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 674 001.

Luka Carter (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans zines, furniture, tattoos, ceramics, clothing, and installations. With a background in construction and cooking, he has a knack for making space for art in overlooked or interstitial spaces––including an outhouse, an abandoned lot, and a van. Carter has been an artist-in-residence at Eureka! House, Chautauqua School of Art, ACRE, and Anderson Ranch. Recent exhibitions include shows at Spill 180, Brooklyn; Baba Yaga Gallery, Hudson, NY; Scope Art Show, Miami; the Baltimore Fine Art Print Fair, MD; and Manitou Art Center, Manitou Springs, CO. He is a Visiting Professor at Colorado College. His design and functional work can be found at Circles in Hudson, NY.

DRAW, PAINT, PRINT

with Michelle Grabner, Brad Killam, & Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
$350 lab fee | July 13–25 | Exploratory

This class champions the interrelationship and the experimental nature of drawing, printmaking, and painting and will invite artists to move fluidly between Ox-Bow’s painting studio and the print studio, providing students with the opportunities to actively combine printmaking, drawing, painting, and collage techniques and materials. Methods demonstrated will include monoprinting, etching, screen printing, frottage, collage, grattage, decalcomania, and fumage. In the painting studio, students can work in watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and/or oils. This course is meant to challenge traditional drawing, painting, and printmaking techniques and focus directly on the spirit of the process and its relationship to contemporary contexts. Chance operations and collaboration will be encouraged. We will review the work of many artists who experiment successfully with a multidisciplinary approach including Dottie Attie, Squeak Carnwath, Judy Pfaff, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Synder, Mickalene Thomas, William Weege, Jeffrey Gibson, and Louisa Chase and discussions will be supplemented by The Slip, 2023 by Prudence Peiffer and “Alex Jovanovich on Peter McGough”, Artforum 2023. Assignments will develop and expand mark-making and compositional vocabularies in relationship to the concepts of expression, attention, histories, form, and social arrangements. Students will be split into 2-groups, one group will have a home-base in the painting studio and the other in the print studio. As the group progresses through content, they will switch studios and focus on assignments specific to those facilities. On the weekend, both groups will come together with all faculty to have group critiques and discussions. The class will culminate in a final presentation of works installed at Ox-Bow.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PAINTING & DRAWING 677 001.

Michelle Grabner (she/her) is an artist, writer, and curator. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has taught since 1996. She has also held teaching appointments at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Yale School of Art, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Grabner is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2018 National Academician in the National Academy of Design, and a 2024 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters Fellow. She has curated major museum exhibitions including the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the inaugural FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2018). In 2021, she co-curated Sculpture Milwaukee with Theaster Gates. In 2024, she curated 50 Paintings, a survey of contemporary international painting at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Grabner, along with artist Brad Killam, co-directs the artist-run project spaces The Suburban, Milwaukee, and The Poor Farm, Little Wolf, both in Wisconsin.

Brad Killam (he/him) has had work featured in over 30 solo and two-person exhibitions (in collaboration with artist Michelle Grabner) and more than 60 group exhibitions since receiving his MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago in 1993. He co-founded and co-directs, with Grabner, two artist-run spaces in Wisconsin: The Suburban, in Milwaukee, and The Poor Farm, in Little Wolf.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung (she/her) is a painter and writer. She was a riot grrrl and worked in used bookstores and bars until her 30s, when she attended graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is opening her attention to composting, depth psychology, difference, climate change, doppelgängers, permaculture, New England furniture, rural transfer stations, daily rhythm, the effects of soul lag on humans, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, the color of sunlight through smoke from fires 3,000 miles away, and the emotional landscapes of the people around her. She has shown all over, including at the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York. She is a frequent lecturer at schools across the country, including Hunter College at CUNY; the University of California, Los Angeles; Ohio University; Cranbrook Academy of Art; the University of Alabama; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Cornell College. Zuckerman-Hartung is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

Breaking Good: Improvisational Stained Glass 

with Devin Balara
$250 lab fee | July 13–25 | Skill–building

This class will provide a full overview of stained glass techniques. Using the copper foil method, students will learn to cut, grind, and solder colorful glass sheets and shards. Emphasis will be placed on experimentation, improvisation, and using what you find among existing scraps. We will explore three-dimensional form construction, template design, and strategies to use stained glass in your own practice. Those with previous stained glass experience will find space in this class to play and take risks, while beginners will come away confidently knowing the rules of glass—and how to break them!  We will engage in readings and ongoing discussions of color theory while considering artists who use color, light, and line, such as Hilma af Klint, Kerry James Marshall, Raúl de Nieves, and Wells Chandler. Assignments will invite students to find their way through a spectrum of glass pieces and arrange them with a focus on color harmony and intentional refraction of light. The class will culminate in a burst of site-specific installations throughout Ox-Bow’s campus.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code SCULPTURE 693 001.

Devin Balara (she/her) is an artist whose work has notably been exhibited at Atlanta Contemporary; Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn; Spring Break Art Show, New York; Roots & Culture, Chicago; the International Sculpture Center, Hamilton Township, NJ; and, most recently, Coco Hunday, Tampa, FL. She has worked for over a decade as a metal shop manager for various institutions, including eight years at Ox-Bow. She received a BFA in Sculpture from the University of North Florida in 2010 and an MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University in 2014. She currently works as a freelance stained glass artist and educator.

Sculptural Basketry: Exploring Form, Color & Tactility

with Dee Clements
$175 lab fee | July 13–25 | Skill-building

Focusing on the expressive potential of 3D weaving and sculptural basketry, this course invites students to explore a range of basketry techniques to create forms, vessels, and structural objects with an emphasis on tactility, color, and creative experimentation. Beginning with small sample projects to introduce key techniques, followed by opportunities to develop a personal small-scale sculptural piece, students will have the option of weaving over molds and formers or working freehand, using various base types to explore how structure and form emerge through process. We will also experiment with dyeing reed, learning techniques to create surface pattern and dimensional color through immersion, layering, and resist processes. We will study historical and contemporary approaches to sculptural basketry, with visual presentations and discussions of artists such as John McQueen, Ed Rossbach, Lillian Elliott, Hugh Hayden, Theda Sandiford, Katherine Westphal, and others whose work expands the boundaries of fiber and form. These case studies will anchor our creative exploration of how basketry can intersect with conceptual, sculptural, and material practices. Emphasizing experimentation, material play, and hands-on making, this course is perfect for artists, designers, and craftspeople interested in fiber, sculpture, and the expressive possibilities of woven form. One assignment will invite students to consider the conceptual and abstract possibilities of weaving by introducing spokes, lattices, netting, and mixed materials. The course will culminate in a presentation of woven wares.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code FIBER 634 001.

Dee Clements (she/her/ella) is a sculptor and designer whose practice uses the language of weaving and ceramics to explore her interests in materials, ethnography, and gender politics. She holds a BFA in Fiber and Material Studies and Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work is currently represented by Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami.

The Dinner Party

with Corey Pemberton
$500 lab fee | July 13–29 | Communal

There’s nothing more satisfying than eating and drinking from handmade wares with friends. This course, open to students of all levels, will focus on establishing a strong foundation in form and function in service of manipulating molten glass into items for a communal table setting. We will learn the processes involved in making objects including drinkware, pitchers, serving bowls, plates, and candlesticks and consider the works of Judy Chicago, Beth Lipman, and Joe Cariati. Underscoring the social nature of the glassblowing process in the studio, our objective will be to create a tablescape to use for a social mixer at the end of the class, bringing everyone together to celebrate one another’s hard work and individuality. Students need only bring a good attitude, an open mind, and a hunger to learn!

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code GLASS 676 001.

Corey Pemberton (he/they) splits his time between directing the Los Angeles–based nonprofit arts organization Crafting the Future, painting, and his glass practice. Pemberton strives to bring together people of all backgrounds and identities, breaking down stereotypes and building bridges, not only through his work with Crafting the Future but also in his personal artistic practice. He has completed residencies at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Alfred University, and Bruket, Bodø, Norway, as well as a Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Craft. He has exhibited work at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art, San Bernardino, CA, and CAM Raleigh, NC, and has work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Art and Design, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Glassblowing 

with Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez
$500 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Skill-building

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of glassblowing while inviting them to consider how working with molten material engages both body and environment. Through hands-on instruction and daily demonstrations, students will learn to gather glass from the furnace and shape it into blown and solid forms using a range of traditional and experimental techniques. Demonstrations will include basic vessel making as well as approaches to color application, form development, and teamwork in the hot shop. Techniques for cold working—such as sanding, polishing, and engraving—will also be covered. Lectures and screenings will provide historical and contemporary context for the material. We will view short documentaries such as Glassmakers of Herat, Glas, and Nancy Callan: Vision and Process, and discuss how artists like Rui Sasaki, Hiromi Takizawa, and Fred Wilson use glass to explore themes of body, space, and identity. Selected readings from Making & Being will support reflections on how artists cultivate awareness and intentionality through their practice. Assignments will progress from foundational skill-building to more open-ended creative work. Early projects may include crafting a series of simple vessels that explore proportion, balance, and gesture. The course will culminate in the design and fabrication of an individual sculpture or installation to be exhibited in the hot shop at the end of the session.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code GLASS 681 001.

Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez (she/her) creates poetic installations that merge glass, neon, imagery, and text, drawing from her Puerto Rican and Persian heritage. She was the inaugural winner of the Adele and Leonard Leight Glass Art Award from the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY, and has held residencies at Blue Mountain Center, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Pilchuck Glass School, and the Corning Museum of Glass, among others. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco; Traver Gallery, Seattle; Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; BWA Wrocław, Poland; and Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark. Passionate about social change and arts education, she previously directed the Bead Project at UrbanGlass, supporting femmes from diverse backgrounds in learning glasswork. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Tyler School of Art, where she earned her BFA, and holds an MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Clay in the Field 

with E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall
$250 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Exploratory

Clay in the Field is an investigation into environmental clay sculpture. In this course, students will trace clay to its geologic origin as weathered rock, carried by rivers, ground by glaciers, and laid in layers over millennia. We will ask what clay is, how it holds water and memory, and why the shores of Lake Michigan are unique. Venturing to clay deposits, we will learn to see, feel, and understand clay in our environment. We will shape questions and develop projects that deepen our relationship with this ancient material. With earth as our medium, the field of ceramics provides fertile ground from which to explore land-based perspectives in contemporary art. Students in this course will wander sand dune trails, comb beaches, and examine Lake Michigan’s clay deposits as they develop site-responsive clay artworks. We will learn techniques such as coil building, raw clay sculpture, wild clay foraging, wattle and daub construction, and organic burn-out methods. Artists such as Ana Mendieta, Rose B. Simpson, and Gabriel Orozco will ground our conversations about materiality, place-based knowledge, human-nonhuman relationships, land rights, and site specificity. We will explore art historical contexts such as vernacular clay architecture, the land art movement, and environmental art. Students can expect to complete a series of clay “field notes” by making clay writing tools, creating clay sketches, and taking impressions with clay. These field notes will document close observations from Ox-Bow and the surrounding environment. How can clay become a recording device to document observations through material? From geology to gesture, the course will culminate in the creation of an independent, site-specific ceramic sculpture utilizing themes and methods explored in the course. Through this project, students will apply the content of the course, to produce unique environmental artworks of their own design.
SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 673 001.

E. Saffronia Downing (she/they) is a ceramic artist and educator whose art practice and research methods are informed by material studies, vernacular art traditions, and ecological thought. Downing is the recipient of various awards, including residencies from PADA, SPACE, and ACRE and fellowships from the College of the Atlantic, the Lunder Institute of American Art, and Ox-Bow. They received their BA in Studio Art from Hampshire College and their MFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Rosemary Holliday Hall (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans installation, sculpture, ceramics, moving image, and performance. Her evolving body of work explores the dynamic relationships between nature and culture. Her work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions across the United States and internationally. Hall has been awarded numerous residencies, fellowships, and collaborative research grants with scientists. These include a Nemeth Art Center residency; Taft Gardens Artist Researcher in Residence; an Ex.Change: Artists and Scientists on Climate Change grant; the Art, Science + Culture Grant from the University of Chicago; the Leroy Neiman Fellowship at Ox-Bow; the Maria and Jan Manetti Shrem International Residency at the Royal Drawing School; and a recent residency at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, enabling her to develop new work in collaboration with ecological researchers. Hall is a co-founder of Spore Space, a tiny artist-run exhibition venue in downtown Ojai, CA. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of California, Davis, where she also studied environmental horticulture.

Go Figure: Representing the Human Form in Painting 

with Richard Hull
$175 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Exploratory

This class will explore ways of representing the figure in painting. Whether observed or imagined, all figurative painting requires invention. Maintaining the believability of that invention, no matter how “unreal” it might become, will be the focus of the class. We will look at a range of figurative representations, from the ancient to the present. After a series of drawing and painting assignments involving shape, scale, and distortion, we will move on to self-directed figurative paintings that will engage the whole language of painting.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PAINTING & DRAWING 647 001.

Richard Hull (he/him) has paintings, drawings, and prints in the collections of many museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago. Hull has presented more than 40 solo exhibitions dating from 1979 to 2023, along with countless group exhibitions, at venues including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. He is represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago.

Drawn to Print at Ox-Bow 

with Ayanah Moor & Oli Watt
$175 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Exploratory

This course will examine the relationship between drawing and print through various techniques for monotypes and monoprints while encouraging a playful approach to both disciplines. Students will develop sketches, drawings, and paintings into workable and reworkable print matrices. Emphasis will be placed on monoprint processes that facilitate iteration, variation, sequencing, and seriality. Techniques taught will include trace monotypes, additive and subtractive monotypes, screen monotypes, and relief monotypes and monoprints. Students will look at, read, and discuss the following as points of reference: Ray and Charles Eames’s film Powers of Ten (thinking about zooming in and out while making work); works by Christina Ramberg and David Weiss (working in sequences, iteration); Tracey Emin’s Monoprint Diary (monoprinting as a mediation between drawing, printing, and painting); Ellsworth Kelly’s 1954 Drawings on a Bus: Sketchbook 23; Nicole Eisenman’s monotypes; Carla Esposito Hayter’s The Monotype: The History of a Pictorial Art; Lynda Barry’s Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (exploring “failure” and “good vs. bad drawings”); and Zarina Hashmi’s relief prints. While students will be encouraged to use all techniques taught to enhance their individual practice, they will also be given daily prompts to develop sketches and drawings. Assignments will include the creation of a monotype based on another student’s sketch using one or all of the following techniques: trace, additive, or subtractive methods. This will yield a cognate, or “ghost print,” which will be passed on to yet another student for further development.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code PRINT 672 001.

Ayanah Moor (any/all) centers the poetics of Blackness and queerness in her approach to painting, print, drawing, and performance. Her work has featured in exhibitions at venues including the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, DePaul Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; ONE Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, Los Angeles; Te Tuhi, Auckland, New Zealand; Proyecto ’ace, Buenos Aires; and daadgalerie, Berlin. Moor’s publications include INCITE Journal of Experimental Media: Sports (2017), edited by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere; Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011) by Nicole Fleetwood; and What Is Contemporary Art? (2009) by Terry Smith. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art.

Oli Watt (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist who creates prints and multiples to connect fictional props and events (often suggested in cartoons, movies, and music) to the contemporary social landscape. He currently serves as Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches in the Printmedia Department. Watt has shown his work nationally and internationally, including in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York; the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Laband Art Gallery, Los Angeles; and Rocket Gallery, London. His work has been discussed in numerous publications, including Art on Paper, Art US, the New Art Examiner, and the Village Voice. He runs Free Range, a gallery and project space in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood.

Building a Cedar Strip Canoe 

with Will Hutchinson
$350 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Skill-building

Students in this course will work together to build a floating work of art, a cedar strip canoe that will join the campus fleet and be used by future generations of artists to enjoy the Ox-Bow lagoon. Students will develop practical skills including methods for effective handwork with spokeshaves, chisels, and hand planes, as well as steam-bending, fiberglassing, and finishing processes. Although this is primarily a skill-building class, we will discuss the social practice possibilities inherent to the canoe and the relationship between objects, processes, and experience. Readings will include texts by Nicolas Bourriaud, Sigurd Olson, and Agnes Denes, while lectures will present canoe construction varieties and history. Assignments will invite students to practice tool sharpening and setup, along with strategies for cooperative working, division of labor planning, and successful communication. Participants will come away with knowledge of how to build a canoe as well as the tools to apply these practical skills to other artistic endeavors. The class will culminate in a canoe launch, a demonstration of effective and unique paddling techniques, and an exploration of the Ox-Bow lagoon.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code ​​SCULPTURE 696 001.

Will Hutchinson (he/him) is a former smokejumper and all-around adventurer. Invested in the truth of experience, he focuses his practice mainly on functional objects that attempt to facilitate and enhance experiences from the mundane to the extraordinary. Hutchinson holds a BFA in Drawing from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Montana. He currently works as a full-time knife maker and teaches glassblowing workshops in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.

Drawing Place in Watercolor & Gouache

with Carrie Gundersdorf
$100 Lab Fee | August 9–15 | Exploratory

Watercolor is historically associated with observation of the natural world, through works such as botanical and wildlife illustrations, J. M. W. Turner’s ethereal landscapes, Charles Burchfield’s transcendental images, and Joseph Yoakum’s reminisced locations. This course will help students build a basic understanding of the materials associated with both transparent watercolor and opaque watercolor (gouache)—paint, brushes, and paper—as well as the techniques: layering washes, working wet into wet, and using the white of the paper to create color. This course celebrates the ease and transportability of working in watercolor and gouache and brings the landscape into the studio. In addition to using the Ox-Bow environment as a source of subject matter, we will look at past and contemporary artists, including John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dawn Clements, Amy Sillman, and Josephine Halvorson. Exercises involving color, observation, and mark-making will help familiarize students with the medium. The class will enable students to build a personal approach to working with the idea of place.

This course is available for non-credit only.

Carrie Gundersdorf (she/her) is an artist and educator whose paintings and drawings reference early modernist art and images of natural and astronomical phenomena. The watercolor technique of layering transparent colors is central to both her drawing and painting practices. Gundersdorf has had solo exhibitions at La Loma Projects, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Drew University, Madison, NJ. Her work has been featured in group shows at 106 Green, New York; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; La Box, Bourges, France; and the Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, among others. The recipient of a 2025 Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Gundersdorf has also received the Artadia Award and the Bingham Fellowship to study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been reviewed in ArtReview, Artforum, Artnet, Art on Paper, the Chicago Tribune, and Time Out Chicago. She earned her BA from Connecticut College and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ceremonial Ceramics: Crafting Vessels of Ritual and Meaning

with Chenlu Hou
$250 Lab Fee | August 9–22 | Exploratory

In this course, participants will explore clay as a material of transformation—an elemental medium that holds narrative, symbolism, ceremony, and function. Using coil and slab construction as a primary sculptural language, students will create ritual vessels and altar objects that reflect personal and collective mythologies. Demonstrations will include coil building, pinching and paddling, carving, sgraffito, slip layering, and low-fire terracotta techniques. Participants will also harvest local clay from a nearby beach, process it, and transform part of it into terra sigillata—connecting their work to place, process, and the alchemy of the elements.

We will look to Guatemalan incense burners, Mexican ceremonial vessels, Chinese Neolithic pottery, and Japanese Jomon works to understand how clay has long been used to invoke the sacred and embody story. Contemporary references will include Akio Takamori, Nicole Cherubini, Simone Leigh, and Rose B. Simpson. Readings from Ceramics in the Expanded Field and viewings from At Home: Artists in Conversation featuring Sonia Boyce and Simone Leigh will help frame clay as both a spiritual and political medium.

Assignments will invite participants to develop a personal visual language through intuitive, symbolic making. Students will create small talismanic forms, trace and translate shadows into vessel designs, and use site-harvested terra sigillata for surface development. The course will culminate in a collective, ceremonial installation—a gathering of vessels as offerings that honor narrative, transformation, and the unseen.

This course is available for non-credit only.

Chenlu Hou (she/her; b. China) is a ceramic artist whose imaginative sculptures draw inspiration from Chinese folk art, ceremonial objects, and moments from her daily life. Blending personal memories with reinterpretations of traditional storytelling, Hou creates a distinctive artistic language that weaves together sharp decorative elements and narrative suggestions. Her hand-built ceramic works explore the intricate relationships between human, animal, and plant forms, inviting viewers into layered worlds where the boundaries between myth, memory, and lived experience blur. She received her MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019 and has completed residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Penland School of Craft, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Archie Bray Foundation. She is currently a Visiting Critic in Ceramics at RISD.

Pour Decisions: Foundry Fundamentals & Practice

with Lloyd Mandelbaum
$250 Lab Fee | August 9 - 22 | Skill-building

This course introduces the fundamentals of metal casting through hands-on exploration of bronze, aluminum, and iron. Students will learn the professional techniques used by art casters to mold, pour, and finish their own sculptural works while emphasizing accessibility and a DIY approach. Through this process, participants will gain a deep understanding of how raw materials, heat, and form intersect in the transformation of metal. Historical and contemporary figures such as Deborah Butterfield, Hanna Jubran, and George Beasley will serve as case studies, offering insight into how artists have used casting to explore structure, gesture, and meaning. The class will also engage in shared readings and screenings, including Sand Molding Basics by Lloyd Mandelbaum and documentation of an academic iron pour filmed by the Chicago Crucible. Students will complete at least one finished cast object created from a two-part sand mold and cast in bronze or aluminum, with full attention to shaping, joining, refinement, and patination. The course covers a broad range of processes—multi-part mold making, crucible and cupola furnace operation, and metal finishing—equipping students with the technical and creative tools to bring new dimension to their sculptural practice.

This course is available for non-credit only.

Lloyd Mandelbaum (he/him) is a metal sculptor and the founder of Chicago Crucible, an art casting foundry started in Chicago in 2009, with its chief production facility now located in Hamilton, MI. Mandelbaum utilizes a variety of molding and casting methods to produce both his own work and that of artists from across the country and internationally. His focus is on cast bronze, aluminum, and iron, integrating traditional analog and contemporary digital methods to keep pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in the art casting arena. He also designs, builds, and markets foundry equipment for other foundries and artists. Mandelbaum received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and worked with a variety of foundries and artists in the Chicago region before going on to found his own business. He has also taught at various universities, schools, and conferences, as well as conducted workshops centered on building and assisting in the operation of foundries for artists in the US and Mexico.

Glass-Blown Organics

with Christen Baker
$500 Lab Fee | August 9–22 | Exploratory

Glass-Blown Organics is an introductory glass course that approaches material investigation and sculpture through a lens of posthumanism. “Posthumanism” refers to a perspective that challenges traditional human-centered views by emphasizing interconnectedness among organisms and complex systems, aiming to disrupt hierarchies and boundaries between humans and other entities. In this course, students will explore three methods of hot glass forming: solid sculpting, glassblowing, and mold blowing with the inclusion of found organic materials. Soil, wood, water, and food are some examples of organic materials that will be used to create glass artworks that speak to the environmental impact of humans in the Anthropocene. Through demonstrations and discussions, students will develop an understanding of sustainable glass practices that can then be applied to their sculptural works. Using these skills and techniques, students will learn to create forms and surfaces that explore glass as a unique material, how glass is deeply significant to place and time, and how to utilize hot glass and organics together to enhance artistic impact. Each component of this course will develop an understanding of material and processes and will facilitate discussions on critical theory, artistic practice, and making with intention. Sculptural works by contemporary glass artists such as Amber Cowan, Sabine Mescher-Leitner, and Kristen Neville Taylor will be important points of consideration. Assignments will explore material inclusions in glass, optics, impressions, and other formal considerations that speak to the environmental impacts of humans in our time. Students will also view selected historical videos from the Rakow Research Library at the Corning Museum of Glass to research the important technological role of glass in our modern world. Students must demonstrate a strong work ethic and a passion for investigating personal artistic strengths and goals throughout this intensive course. Students of all experience levels working with glass are welcome and encouraged.

This course is available for non-credit only.

Christen Baker (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the complex relationships between attention and desire and the physical and digital economies that emerge therefrom. Her interest in exploring the intersection of technology, new media, and visual art has led her to work in a variety of media, including glass, neon, sculpture, photography, and 3D scanning. She has utilized these media to create a new visual lexicon that speaks to the subtle and often indirect ways in which attention and desire shape our perception of material use, physical space, and information hierarchies. Baker has had residencies and exhibitions at Belger Arts, Kansas City, MO; the International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemét, Hungary; and UrbanGlass, Brooklyn. Most recently, she was awarded the Neon as Soulcraft residency in collaboration with She Bends, resulting in an exhibition at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco. Baker earned a BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA in Glass from the Tyler School of Art, where she was awarded the Assistantship for Tyler Information Technology and Digital Services. She received the Leroy Neiman Fellowship at Ox-Bow in recognition of her work as an MFA student at Tyler.

Floral Intensive

with Maddie Reyna
$100 Lab Fee | August 16 - 22 | Exploratory

This immersive retreat-like course invites participants to explore the sculptural and painterly potential of flower arranging as both supportive of and central to a creative studio practice. Students will create at least three distinct arrangements—one inspired by the lush and layered Garden Eclectic style, one by the contemplative Japanese art of Ikebana, and one based on an abstract artwork of their choice. Mornings will be spent arranging with fresh, seasonal blooms, while afternoons will offer quiet, self-directed studio time for drawing and painting from the arrangements. The group will also visit White Barn Flower Farm, whose team will deliver a beautiful selection of flowers to sustain the class throughout the week.  Demonstrations and guided exercises will introduce the use of chicken wire and kenzan armatures, flower care, and techniques for balance and movement in design. The class will draw inspiration from artists and traditions that treat flowers as both subject and philosophy. We’ll look to Jan van Eyck for his devotion to botanical precision and symbolism, Shozo Sato for his teaching of Ikebana as a mindful and performative act, and Willem de Rooij for his conceptual installations that elevate floral form to social and political reflection. Through conversation and observation, students will consider how arranging can move beyond decoration to become a meditative, painterly gesture—one that reflects culture, emotion, and time. Throughout the week, participants will complete three floral compositions—Garden Eclectic, Ikebana-Inspired, and Abstract Interpretation—each paired with a drawing or painting study that deepens sensitivity to color, rhythm, and form. The session will culminate in a collective installation of all arrangements, transforming the studio into a living gallery that celebrates impermanence, beauty, and creative renewal.

This course is available for non-credit only.

Maddie Reyna (she/her) is an American painter who began arranging flowers as a way to have live subjects for her work. That practice has come to stand alone as she applies considerations of color, form, and composition to three-dimensional organic matter. The recipient of an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she studied at the Flower School of New York, designs flower arrangements for brides and other party throwers in Chicago, and is the Education Director at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency.