Crafting the Future & Ox-Bow

In 2026, Ox-Bow is thrilled to be partnering with Crafting the Future to welcome a group of BIPOC participants ages 15–18 to engage in courses whose topics include metalworking, glassblowing, monoprinting, and quilting. The program runs from July 5 through 11.

Students eligible for this opportunity can enroll in two of the following courses for 2026.

How Am I Like Glass? with Pearl Dick
This class will introduce students to glass as a material for expression, discovery, and exchange. We will explore blown and cast forms—both hollow and solid—and experiment with casting onto and into found and fabricated objects. Curiosity, play, and responsiveness to the surrounding environment will guide the work. Collaboration and experimentation are encouraged; kindness and compassion are essential. Throughout the session, we will look at artists who have used glass to explore fragility, transparency, and transformation, including Mona Hatoum and Doris Salcedo. Their practices will serve as points of reference for understanding how material can hold memory, tension, and meaning. Assignments will ask: What can glass do? How does it respond to and transform what it touches? How can I use glass to explore my surroundings? What does it help me reveal or understand? Each prompt invites students to approach glass not only as a craft but as a lens for perceiving and engaging with place, process, and community.

Art Quilts with a Story to Tell with Lizz Leral
In this course, participants will create art quilts that tell a personal story. We will explore how color, texture, and pattern can capture memories, experiences, and identity. No sewing experience is needed. Participants will gain hands-on skills in quilting, appliqué, fabric collage, block printing, and basic sewing, with space for experimentation. The course will examine the work of Harlem-based textile artist Michael Cummings, whose narrative quilts depict African American history, culture, and daily life; Carolyn Mazloomi, a master storyteller whose quilts highlight African American experiences and heritage; and Bisa Butler, known for making vibrant quilted portraits that celebrate African American life and identity. In addition, we will look at the improvisational style of the Gee’s Bend quilters, who have created bold, unexpected designs in a small Alabama community since the mid-1800s, and how tradition and resourcefulness shaped their art. As part of a discussion on symbolism, participants will be introduced to the book Hidden in Plain View, by Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, which explores possible meanings of quilt symbols in the Underground Railroad. By week’s end, each participant will design and complete a one-of-a-kind art quilt, starting with sketching ideas and selecting fabrics, incorporating block printing and appliqué, then assembling and stitching the finished piece.

Shifting Traces: Monoprinting with Pedro Montilla
This course invites participants into the world of monoprinting, where painting meets print and image is constantly transformed. Monoprinting is immediate, playful, and unpredictable, a medium that rewards curiosity and invites accidents on the image. Working with oils, found textures, and fragments from Ox-Bow’s landscape, we will paint on plates, press them into paper, and watch as marks shift, soften, and open opportunity for surprise. Alongside traditional techniques, we will emphasize low-equipment methods so that participants can continue printing beyond the studio, turning kitchens, parks, or bedrooms into print spaces. Each print becomes a record of wandering hands and eyes, a trace of a moment caught between making and unmaking. Along the way, we’ll look to Beatriz González, who reflects on memory and politics through repetition, and Nicole Eisenman, whose monotypes playfully twist the familiarity of a portrait. Readings from Tracey Emin’s One Thousand Drawings will guide us into the intimate and expressive possibilities of the medium. Screenings will bring us into the studios of González and William Kentridge, where materials themselves become agents of resistance, translation, and transformation. Assignments will center on creating monoprints from drawings and gathered natural fragments, using press and hand printing to capture fleeting patterns.

Forging Narratives: Mixing Steel & Soft Metals with Kiran Chapman
This hands-on course introduces students to the fundamentals of blacksmithing and metalworking, with a focus on the interplay between material, function, and narrative. Students will learn to shape and combine different metals—such as steel with softer copper or brass—to create singular, functional objects. Techniques covered include tapering, bending, texturing, fullering, and riveting, as well as approaches to surface and form. Beyond skill-building, the course emphasizes design as a mode of storytelling, asking how choices in material and form reflect identity, values, and cultural meaning. By the end of the session, students will complete an original object that bridges craft and creativity. We will examine how design and craft intersect with cultural identity, aesthetics, and everyday use. Our discussions will look at artists such as Rashid Johnson, whose material choices activate histories of race and cultural memory, and Cheryl R. Riley, who integrates ornament, symbolism, and function in her furniture and design practice. Readings will include excerpts from David Pye’s The Nature and Art of Workmanship, which probes the distinction between the handmade and the industrial, while screenings from the PBS series Craft in America will highlight diverse approaches to design as a vessel for personal and cultural narratives. Students will design and forge one functional object—such as a utensil, vessel, or tool—combining steel and soft metal, accompanied by a brief written reflection on their design choices.