August, 2026
by Executive Director, Shannon R. Stratton
Photos by Mak Harrison, Summer Fellow 2026
It is August and the summer fade is here. The last weeks of campus at full swing will segue into our quieter months of autumn color and harvest celebrations. This last month always feels a bit slower, and a bit hotter, even if the temperature dips. Everyone on campus can see the horizon even if they don’t want to.
It is an incredible privilege to get to experience Ox-Bow every summer, and to both be a part of and bear witness to the transformation that happens for so many of the artists who spend time with us here. Across all of our participants there are beautiful, remarkable stories of being moved in ways that surprised them. And while just about everyone can say in the moment that something meaningful happened during their time with us, the lessons often take hold in time. It is a year or two later that people really see what Ox-Bow gave them.
Last night was the culminating meal for Corey Pemberton’s class, The Dinner Party. An annual tradition, the class makes a spectacular feast in collaboration with our culinary team, served on the wares they learned to craft during their time together. Staff, fellows, and students dine side-by-side, dressed up in whatever fancy dress we can piece together from camp clothes and our shared costume closet, The Kim.
Last night they hosted a white party with a full southern spread: collard greens, shrimp and grits, fried chicken, mac and cheese, grilled peaches, and more. There were fresh flower arrangements down the center of the table that the students made that afternoon, and everyone wore flower crowns. The sun set along the lagoon while we all mixed and mingled for what many of us affectionately call "the event of the season." It honestly makes me a little emotional every year, because it perfectly captures what makes Ox-Bow feel so profoundly special: moments of sacred play.
If you look back in Ox-Bow’s archive you can find photos from our earliest years of artists dressed in a range of homemade costumes and mismatched fancy dress. From the beginning, this place has been a kind of ludic space—a safe haven to access flow states, frivolity, delight, and suspension of disbelief. I know it sounds clichéd, but "magic" is how nearly everyone who comes here describes it.
From the outside, it might seem like a simple holiday, but it's not. Everyone here is at work. Whether it is making and maintaining the campus container, teaching classes, or learning and growing as a student artist, the work is happening. And it cuts deeper into the psyche than an average day out in the "regular world" because of the immersion a temporary artistic community provides. On campus, participants get to experience a brief, yet deeply impactful vision of community from inside an alternative cultural infrastructure—one that doesn’t separate art and life, but intentionally intertwines them.
As art writer and cultural worker Laura Raicovich wrote in her recent article, “Society’s Repair Begins With Art” (Hyperallergic, 6/1/2026): “The reintegration of art and life must take place, not only for the quality of our individual and collective existence, but also because it’s fundamental to civic engagement and public good. If we can imagine the world as we want to live it, we have a chance to make it real.”
Institutions have a way of creating detachment where there should be connection, even when art and culture are the exact lens we need to see ourselves and others. Communities like Ox-Bow are places capable of radically shifting what people believe is possible for living—by collapsing the line between art and life completely.
Before the summer drifts away from us, I hope you’ll join us on the meadow for a few more sunsets. We’d love to see you here.