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Save the Date - May 13 Benefit Concert with Boz Scaggs!

03/13/17

Dear Oxbow Friends,

It's been a couple of months since you have heard from me; lots has been going on, including welcoming OS36 in January. They are now well into the Fortune Cookie project, and are delighted some sunshine has finally arrived after all the crazy rain this winter. Students thoroughly enjoyed Visiting Artist Hung Liu and Jeff Kelley’s recent residency where she worked closely with students on large-format paintings of tiny objects, and Jeff delivered a series of college-level slide lectures on contemporary art history. As some of you will remember, Hung was our very first resident artist, working in a building on the fairgrounds since the studios were not even built!

Saturday, May 13 will be a very big day at Oxbow. The Final Show Open House for the public is from 2:00-5:00 p.m. (OS36 families, watch your email for details on the plan for the morning which will be sent soon.)

And, as I hope you have heard by now, we are holding our Spring Benefit Concert that same Saturday evening. We are very pleased that the legendary Boz Scaggs will be performing, so make sure you mark your calendars. Boz performed at an Oxbow benefit many years ago now, and he was fabulous! We are delighted he's willing to return.

The Benefit Concert is at 6:00pm, a short walk from Oxbow at The CIA at Copia where guests will enjoy refreshments and have the option to partake of a buffet dinner at seated reserved tables, or purchase a concert-only ticket. Dinner with concert tickets are $350 each, and concert-only tickets $125. Printed invitations will be sent early April, so keep an eye out for yours. We will also host a curated Oxbow Alumni Art Show in the foyer of The CIA at Copia, which will allow guests to see both the immediate impact of an Oxbow experience at Final Show, and what can happen after students graduate from our wonderful program.

Finally, you may have heard back in the fall about our idea to leverage Oxbow's beautiful campus and prime location for the BottleRock music festival on Memorial Day Weekend, May 26-28 . The idea came to fruition thanks to unanimous approval by the Napa Planning Commission. We will be setting up 16 deluxe safari-style tents for 32 guests who will enjoy private wine tours in the mornings, rock out all afternoon and evening at the festival with 3-day VIP passes, and stay within a stone's throw to the entrance to the festival venue. All of the tents sold out within 24 hours for $10K each which makes this a fantastic fundraiser in support of Oxbow's scholarship fund.

I hope this newsletter finds you in good health and fine spirit, and I look forward to seeing many of you on campus in May.

Warm regards,
Stephen Thomas, Head of School

It's been a whirlwind week, but also a time when I sang the praises of Oxbow to my colleagues. I've been thinking much about how Oxbow is an exemplar of true education. That art centers the curriculum is hardly surprising, and for those of us who work within the traditional educational mold Oxbow offers a gold standard of focused project based learning. Beyond the school's approach to immersive experience are the intangibles which make Oxbow different. The sense of community and of working together, even as each student retained their strong individual presence is palpable. The feeling of warmth and trust between the adults and the nearly adults in the Oxbow community could be felt throughout the campus. The openness of the architecture and interconnectedness of the three studios in themselves speak of the Oxbow philosophy and identity. More than form follows function, the physical attributes of Oxbow have a distinct warmth and invite exploration.

I'm sure that the ongoing challenges of leading and reinventing your school might sometimes keep you from having the time to see Oxbow with the fresh eyes of a visitor, but your steady presence and vision are really visible in every detail. Thank you for inviting me to one of the most profound experiences in my career.

— Ken Rush, Visual Arts Department, Packer Collegiate Institute

At Oxbow, I got to try inquiry-based learning for the first time. This allowed me to control the amount of rigor and the depth of research in my topic, as well as picking a topic that I found most interesting. From going through this new process of learning, I feel excited to go back to the rigor of my sending school to apply the inquiry-based perspective to my classes.

— Meave Cunningham, Fall, 2015

I want to thank you all for being so supportive and wonderful, thank you for running this incredible program. And half of my acceptance to RISD is because of Oxbow. (Especially thanks to Chris who wrote my letter of rec, to Jennifer who revised my essays, to the admissions team who helped me with my portfolio.

— Jeff Shen, Fall 2014

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