Thanks to Izzy for this week's blog post:

Hello Oxblog! Let's catch up! I'll get you up to speed on some of our adventures....

DAY TRIP!: On Tuesday OS41 ventured out into the great city of San Francisco. We went to the SFMOMA and saw lots of really cool, creativity-inspiring art. We followed that up with a picnic lunch in the Yerba Buena Gardens and a stroll across the always marvelous Golden Gate Bridge. Weary, we returned to Napa and marked the end of a successful first field trip.

The great outdoors with an existentialist twist: this week, each academic section forwent the traditional schedule of two, ninety minute classes for a three hour hike with Larissa. This wasn't just any hike. Over the course of the week leading up to the hike, we had been working on pieces about what we lived for. This assignment was inspired by chapter 2 of Thoreau's seminal Walden in which he discussed what is essential in life. Some students chose to write poems, others chose essays, letters, vignettes and other forms of literature. We hiked up to the top of the trail in silence then sat in a circle and shared what we had written.

Art Section Shuffle: On Monday, art sections changed once again. Sections 1 and 3 moved on from their two week Painting/Sculpture class with section 1 going to Printmaking and 3 going to New Media. Sections 2 and 4 began our painting and sculpture odyssey as we churned out our first few assignments based on the theme "Mirror, Mask, Shadow, Self." We started by making drawings of sections of our faces which were then cast in plaster. Next, we made non-objective abstract paintings inspired by our feelings while being cast followed by a combination piece that explored the idea of shadow and incorporated our plaster "masks."

..... and that's what you missed on OS41!