Muraling at Ox-Bow
with Alex Bradley Cohen & Nicola Florimbi
PAINTING & DRAWING 605 001 | 3 credits | $175 Lab Fee
June 15–28, 2025
In this class, students will have the opportunity to design, propose, and implement a large outdoor mural that will beautify and celebrate Ox-Bow. Visible from the main entrance road into campus, the mural will greet all visitors and participants. Students will learn strategies for planning, drafting, scaffolding, and collecting supplies for their collaborative mural. The class will draw inspiration from the style and signage of Ox-Bow and consider the work of muralists Diego Rivera, Ben Shahn, Seymour Fogel, Thelma Johnson Streat, Keith Haring, and Bernard Williams, among others. In the first few days of the course, students and faculty will work together to design three proposals, to be reviewed and approved by Ox-Bow’s Built & Natural Environment Committee. The remainder of the course will center on implementation of the selected design.
Alex Bradley Cohen, Social Construct #4, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 26 x 32 in.
Alex Bradley Cohen (he/him) lives and works in Chicago. Alex utilizes painting to visualize the push and pulls of political life. Working with acrylic paint on canvas, he depicts friends, family members, and himself in scenes that foreground everyday moments. Materializing from personal photographs and memories rather than direct observation, each painting serves as an exercise in imaginative world building. Recent group exhibitions include In Relation to Power: Politically Engaged Works from the Collection, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; and Triple: Alex Bradley Cohen, Louis Fratino, and Tschabalala Self, University Art Museum at the University of Albany, New York. Other exhibitions include The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, Illinois; and The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles; among others. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and was an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency.
Nicola Florimbi, Mother and Daughter, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 56 x 62 inches
Nicola Florimbi (she/her) is an artist born in Santa Fe, New Mexico and lives in Chicago, Illinois. Her education includes an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Group exhibitions include Orange Noise, The Capsule, Chicago (2024); Graduate Show I, SAIC, Chicago (2018); Until You Say So, Bolsky Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2017); AHWA, Salafi Cowboy Collective, Los Angeles.