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Read the latest news coming from Ox-Bow School of the Art & Artists’ Residency

An Autumn Feast on the Meadow: Ox-Bow’s Harvest Dinner with Amy Thielen and Meriem Bennani’s Zig Zag Art Grill

Saugatuck, Michigan (September 2, 2025) — This October, Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency (Ox-Bow) invites guests to gather on its scenic meadow for a once-in-a-season celebration: the Harvest Dinner, an evening of food, art, and community. 

On Saturday, October 4, at 5:30 p.m., we welcome a Midwestern culinary talent to campus for a harvest feast en plein air, celebrating the arrival of autumn on the shores of Lake Michigan. Amy Thielen, a two-time James Beard award-winning chef and food journalist, will lead the evening’s menu filled with local and seasonal flavors.

Thielen, author of The New Midwestern Table, Give a Girl a Knife, and her latest cookbook, Company: The Radical Art of Cooking for Others (W.W. Norton), brings her creative, convivial approach to the table. Each guest will receive a copy of Company—a fitting memento of an evening dedicated to food, fellowship, and the art of gathering. Her cooking show, Heartland Table, premiered on Food Network in 2013 and ran for two seasons. Thielen has also been a contributing editor at Saveur, has written for and been featured in Food & Wine, The New York Times, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Food52, and The Wall Street Journal, among others, and appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered, Minnesota Public Radio, The Splendid Table, and Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods.

Also lending his culinary talents in collaboration to the event is chef and co-owner of Duck Alley in Saugatuck, Jazer Syed. Together, they will activate a remarkable new addition to Ox-Bow’s campus: Meriem Bennani’s Zig Zag Grill.

Forged in Chicago from food-grade steel, Zig Zag reflects Bennani’s fascination with vernacular cooking traditions—especially the vibrant chicken-grilling parks of Oman—while echoing the geometric steel forms that frame her celebrated video installations. At Ox-Bow, the grill will serve as both an everyday tool and a living artwork—a site where chefs and visiting artists convene, residents experiment, and the Great Lakes arts community gathers for shared meals under the open sky.

Meriem Bennani’s Zig Zag Grill, created for RenBen 2025, was donated by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago with support from Richard Wright and Valerie Carberry.

Tickets for the Harvest Dinner are $200 and extremely limited. Purchase here

Photo Caption: (left to right) Amy Thielen, Jazer Syed, Zig Zag Grill, and Meriem Bennani

Ox-Bow Celebrates 40 Years of Glass Education with Live Collaboration by Beth Lipman and Corey Pemberton

SAUGATUCK, MI (July 14, 2025)  — In honor of 40 years of glass education at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency (Ox-Bow), renowned glass artists Beth Lipman and Corey Pemberton will create a collaborative work of art during the 2025 Field of Vision summer benefit. The piece, a one-of-a-kind glass sculpture created live in Ox-Bow’s Burke Glass Studio, will be auctioned to support the purchase of a modernized furnace.

The medium of glass has long been a fundamental part of Ox-Bow’s educational programs since glass artist and long-time faculty Jerry Catania brought the first glass class to Ox-Bow in 1985. Its enduring presence is not only due to its material complexity, glowing studio, and striking results, but for the unique way it brings people together in community. “Glass has always held a special place at Ox-Bow—not just for its technical brilliance, but for the way it brings people together,” said Ox-Bow Board Member Martin Fluhrer. “The studio is a site of heat, risk, and collaboration, and it is where lifelong bonds are often formed. To see two artists of Beth and Corey’s caliber working side by side in that environment is a profound tribute to what glass means here: community, transformation, and legacy.”

Photo Caption: (left) Beth Lipman by Rich Maciejewski and (right) Corey Pemberton by Nolan Zunk, Summer Fellow

Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency Introduces Five-Year Strategic Plan

SAUGATUCK, MI – Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency has established a Strategic Plan to guide the organization from 2025 through 2030. The plan reinvigorates Ox-Bow’s purpose, vision, and priorities while creating actionable steps towards its future ambitions.

“Over the course of two-years, Ox-Bow developed its first truly comprehensive strategic plan thanks to the Capacity Building: Michigan Lakeshore program. This plan has been shaped by the collective wisdom of staff leaders, board members, and community members and deeply informed by the changing landscape for the arts and education since 2020,” stated Executive director, Shannon Stratton, “I am personally grateful for everyone’s contributions and truly energized to have this road map to guide our next 5 years.”

Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency makes final purchase on historic building in Douglas, MIchigan – Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, June 14, 2025.

SAUGATUCK, MI (June 6, 2025) – Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency is excited to announce the purchase of 137 Center Street in Douglas, Michigan. The former site of the Douglas library will become the permanent home of Ox-Bow House. 

“The City of Douglas is thrilled to welcome Ox-Bow House as a permanent part of our downtown community,” said City of the Village of Douglas Mayor, Cathy North. “Their purchase of the former library building ensures that this creative and vibrant space remains a cornerstone of artistic life in Douglas. We congratulate them on their ribbon cutting and look forward to their continued presence in the heart of our city.”

Ox-Bow House, a space for the larger community to experience the arts through the same purpose that fuels the 115-year old, independent summer art school that has been welcoming artists from around the nation and beyond to West Michigan since its founding in 1910. Since the inception of Ox-Bow House, we have welcomed over 8,000 visitors, hosted 20 exhibitions featuring more than 60 Michigan-based artists, and generated over $225,000 in revenue—much of which directly supports local artists. 

Ox-Bow House is located at 137 Center Street, Douglas, MI 49406

Ox-Bow School of Art awarded a three-year Special Project grant from the Efroymson Family Fund.

DOUGLAS, MI (November 4, 2022) – The Efroymson Family Fund has given a three-year grant – totaling to $150,000 – to Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency. The funds will support Ox-Bow House: the school’s three-year pilot project, an adaptive reuse initiative for community engagement.

Ox-Bow House is a place for fellowship, art and education, falling in line with the mission that fuels the 112-year old, independent summer art school that has been welcoming artists from around the nation and beyond to West Michigan since its founding in 1910. The project will focus on four goals: activating the former library with thought-provoking programs and a retail space; serving as a cultural anchor for residents and visitors to experience contemporary art; connecting our visiting artists, faculty and students to the local community; and providing space for administrative offices and archives that will be made available to the public in 2023.

The grant will support growth and opportunities for Ox-Bow House from 2022 to 2024 with annual respective gifts of $60K, $50K, and $40K. Over the duration of these years, a portion of these funds will be matched with support from other grants and individual contributions. This is not the first generous gift from the Efroymson Family Fund, which also supports the school’s Visiting Artists Program.

“Ox-Bow is deeply grateful for this support from the Efroymson Family Fund and the confidence they have in our vision for Ox-Bow House,” states Executive Director, Shannon Stratton, “This significant contribution will help us reach our goals in these initial pilot years: evolve a public facing community interface, build a strong retail program, develop our archive and continue our research into the best re-use design for the space with our resident architect Charlie Vinz.”

The classes, workshops, residencies, and public programs of Ox-Bow are developed in-house by a professional staff of artists, curators, and educators. With a vibrant community of nationally and internationally respected artists on campus each year, Ox-Bow House seeks to extend this resource to the public through a diverse menu of programs throughout the year. 

“Ox-Bow is thrilled about joining the Center Street community in Douglas,” Board President Steve Meier affirms, “this extension of our campus is poised to cultivate deeper connections between Ox-Bow’s programs and art-lovers living and visiting the area. The range of opportunities to connect, converse, learn and appreciate the ground-breaking work happening in artist's studios today is limitless.”

The name Ox-Bow House acknowledges the legacy of this historic building as a place for community and celebrates the idea that the house will be a charming place to stimulate learning and exploration. This accessible location will be a welcoming space for community neighbors in western Michigan as well as summer visitors to Douglas and Saugatuck. Plans include a comfortable environment where guests can partake in refreshment while digging deep into meaningful and open conversations over the arts. Ox-Bow House will be home to an exhibition hall, space for programming, and a retail environment for curated art and design objects by alumni and artists from throughout the region and beyond.

Community members eager to experience Ox-Bow House before the year’s end can look forward to the launch of the Winter Market, which will feature the work of regional and national artists. The market opens Saturday, November 26 and will be available to the public Thursdays through Saturdays from 11:00-6:00 p.m. until December 17.

Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency Announces Shannon R. Stratton as New Executive Director

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CHICAGO (October 30, 2019) – The Board of Directors of Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency today announced the appointment of Shannon R. Stratton as the 110-year-old organization’s next Executive Director. Stratton is currently Interim Senior Curator-at-Large for the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and Core Faculty for the MA in Critical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, as well as an independent curator, working closely with the Poor Farm in Little Wolf, Wisconsin. She will join Ox-Bow full-time on February 3, 2020.

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Shannon R. Stratton, photo by Jessica Labatte