Revive and refresh your artistic
spirit!
Register Now!
Oxbow Summer Studio Art Workshops:
June 13-22, 2008
Photography, Painting, Printmaking
Taught and hosted by members of the Oxbow faculty, the Oxbow Summer Studios
offer adult artists the rare opportunity of time, space, environment,
facilities and friends to truly re-create themselves as artists. Limited
to 24 participants, workshops are available in Photography, Painting and
Drawing, and Printmaking. Participants work in Oxbow’s new studio
facilities located on the bank of the picturesque Napa River in the heart
of the California wine country, live in on-campus mini-suites and enjoy
the food and wine of the Napa Valley at mealtime.
Restful accommodations, on campus.
Oxbow’s college-style three-acre campus features a contemporary
teaching-studio complex, newly renovated dormitory-style apartments, a
dining hall housed in an historic Napa landmark building, and beautiful
gardens and grounds. The teaching studios consist of four, light-filled
galleries with “garage-door” style retractable walls, each
opening to a beautiful and intimate view of the oxbow in the Napa River,
directly across from COPIA: The American Center for Wine and Food.
Workshop participants can room on campus in co-ed, apartment-like dorms
adjacent to the studios. Each mini-suite apartment consists of three bedrooms,
two baths, and a living area with sofa, work table and chairs. Bedrooms
are furnished with two single beds, a dresser and a desk.
The pleasure of the table at Oxbow.
Integral to Oxbow’s founding concept and vision, in which all the
arts contribute to education and learning, the meals are essential to
both the quality of your experience and your positive frame of mind. Participants
will have breakfast and a sumptuous lunch prepared specially for them
each day, accompanied by a selection of local wines. Evenings are free
for our guests to explore and enjoy the many fine restaurants and dining
experiences available in the Napa Valley. During the week, there are informal
gatherings over wine and hors d’oeuvres and a gala farewell dinner
on the final evening of the program. All meals are served in the historic
Scaruffi Dining Hall and on the deck overlooking the Napa River.
Three workshops with as much—or as little—teaching
as you want.
As arts educators ourselves, we know how important it is to have the time,
the space, and the right environment to concentrate on recovering and
nurturing our “artist selves.” This is the core concept behind
the Oxbow Summer Studio Arts Workshops. Our faculty are also artists themselves
and appreciate the differing levels of attention and input that adult
participants might want and need in each of the three studios.
Rendering the Emotional Landscape:
A Workshop in Image and Text
"Whether we are leaving it or coming into it. It's here
that matters, it is place. Whether we understand where we are or don't,
that is the story: To be here or not to be...I have a place from which
to tell my stories. So do you. I expect."
- from Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver
In this interdisciplinary workshop, we explore the internal landscape
that shapes our sense of place in the world. Participants engage in close
study of the surrounding enviornment, discovering the stories that reside
both in the land and the self. We will combine the art of photography
and writing to craft our own stories about the self. In essence, the camera
lens itself will foster the dynamic relationship between image and text.
Instruction and critical feedback will be offered in the writing and photographic
processes throughout the workshop. Digital and traditional black and white
photography options are available; all experience levels are invited to
attend.
Oxbow faculty:
Jennifer Jordan earned a B.A. in English from
Mount Holyoke College, followed by a MEd. from the University of Massachusetts.
In the last chapter of her life, she taught high school English in Massachusetts
and New Hampshire and is currently the English instructor at The Oxbow
School. She has been writing ever since she could hold a pencil and has
eagerly played the dual role of participant and facilitator of writing
wrokshops for writers of all ages for 15 years.
Pattiann Koury teaches photography and new media at The
Oxbow School. She studied photography at Rhode Island School of Design
and the California Institute of the Arts along with design, art history
and film, graduating from Cal Arts with a degree in photography. Her photographs
and writings about photography have been published in Darkroom Photography
Magazine, Camera and Darkroom Magazine, Outdoor Photographer and Clerestory,
a literary magazine published by Brown University.
Invented and Observed Worlds
Despite painting's technical simplicity, the medium has managed not only
to sustain our interest as a vital and expressive art form, but also to
grow in importance in the larger contemporary art dialogue. This is due
in large part to the attraction we have to the virtual world painting
invites us into. Simply put, there is something particularly attractive
about a non-electronic virtuality that has the added bonus of material
heft. In this workshop, we will consider the traditional and contemporary
implications of painting's role as a window unto another world.
You will have the time and space to further your technical and conceptual
skills through daily exercises in observational drawing, formal and compositional
arrangement, color mixing, as well as individual and group critiques.
Working on canvas, wood or paper with oils, acrylics, multi-media, gouache
and / or watercolor, you will have the opportunity to push your skill-set
with glazing techniques, encaustic, collage, transfers and other alternative
processes. Basic drawing skills and some experience in painting are required,
and students are encouraged but not required to arrive at Oxbow with a
personal project they are interested in furthering as the week develops.
Oxbow faculty:
Tia Factor has been exploring possibilities in the medium
of paint for twelve years and has taught at the University of California
at Berkeley before becoming the Painting / Drawing instructor at the Oxbow
School. Factor curated two exhibits, Deep Seeded, at an urban farm in
an economically impoverished Oakland neighborhood and What the World Needs
Now (The Love Show) at Blackbird Space in San Francisco. Factor has shown
her work regionally at numerous spaces including the Traywick Gallery,
the Berkeley Art Museum, the Richmond Art Center, the Sonoma Valley Museum
of Art, Southern Exposure, and The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Printing Personal Space: Interior and Exterior
Copperplate etching has traditionally been a medium of intense introspection
as well as a window on the outside world. The Oxbow summer etching workshop
introduces intaglio printing to beginners and provides advanced printmakers
the opportunity to refine their skills. Participants work on copper plates
in all the traditional techniques: drypoint, hard and soft ground etching,
aquatint, and multi-plate color printing. The class is conducted through
demonstrations and one-on-one instruction. Plates, paper, and basic materials
are provided, but participants should bring drawings, photographs, or
other source material for their imagery. The expectation is that participants
will produce as much new imagery as possible, rather than print editions.
Oxbow faculty:
Stephen Thomas trained as a printer at Crown Point Press, where he printed
for Wayne Thiebaud, Brice Marden, John Cage, Robert Kushner, and William
Wiley, among many others. He has taught printmaking at the high school
level since 1984. He is the Head and Founding Director of The Oxbow School.
A typical day at The Oxbow Summer Studios
Breakfast 8:30—8:45
Workshop I 9:00—12:00
Lunch 12:00—1:00
Mid-day Break 1:00—1:30
Workshop II 1:30—5:00
Wine and
hors d’oeuvres 5:15—6:15
Dinner On your own (with as much advice as you want!)
Open studios 7:00—10:00
About The Oxbow School
The Oxbow School is a one-semester boarding school program for high school
juniors and seniors from both public and independent schools across the
nation. Oxbow’s interdisciplinary curriculum, centered in an intense
and self-reflective approach to studio art-making, offers students rich
opportunities for learning in an environment that extends the traditional
school model. We believe that the critical and flexible thinking and problem-solving
skills central to the studio art experience support student learning in
other disciplines and other contexts, building new paths of personal responsibility
in education and in life.
To Register
The all-inclusive cost of The Oxbow Summer Studio Arts Workshops is $1,800.
The fee includes all instruction, use of the school’s facilities
and equipment, materials, one person’s accommodations in a mini-suite,
two meals a day, and other special activities such as a field trip and
the final dinner.
To register, complete the form below and mail it with a $350 non-refundable
deposit to:
The Oxbow School
Summer Studio Arts Workshops
530 Third Street
Napa, CA 94559
Payment in full is due by January 15, 2008.
Travel
Plan on arriving on campus the afternoon of June 13th and departing on
the morning of June 22nd. There are shuttles to Napa from both Oakland
and San Francisco airports (see www.evanstransportation.com for timetables
and fares).
**On the afternoon of check-in, June 13th, Oxbow will host an “ice
breaker” reception with wine and hors d’oeuvres. On the final
full day of the program, June 21st, there will be a celebratory Farewell
Dinner for all participants. Participants depart after breakfast on June
22nd.
Thank you! We look forward to welcoming you to Oxbow School and Napa.
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