Press Release: NEA Grant

Ox-Bow School of Art to Receive $50,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

Longform Artists-in-Residence (2023) at work in the Krehbiel Ceramics Studio. Photo by Natia Ser (Summer Fellow, 2023).

SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN –  Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists Residency is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $50,000. These funds will support Ox-Bow’s Longform Artist Residency. 

This is the eleventh grant designated to Ox-Bow by the NEA and is to date the largest grant received from the institution. In total, the NEA will award 1,135 Grants for Arts, totalling to more than $37 million as part of its second round of fiscal year 2024 grants. It is through grants such as this that Ox-Bow is able to realize their mission to connect artists to a network of creative resources, people, and ideas; an energizing natural environment; and rich artistic history and vital future.

“Projects like Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities—all through the arts,” said NEA Chair, Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “So many aspects of our communities such as cultural vitality, health and wellbeing, infrastructure, and the economy are advanced and improved through investments in art and design, and the National Endowment for the Arts is committed to ensuring people across the country benefit.”

The funded project, Longform, is a studio residency that seeks to provide an intensive, creative development experience, fostering deep connections amongst facilitators, visiting artists, and participants. One facilitator, three visiting artists, and a group of residents from any career stage, generation, and practicing any media shape the residency experience through a robust schedule of lectures, readings, studio visits, workshops, critical discussions, and studio time. In 2024 artist kg will return as the residency’s facilitator.

“Ox-Bow is so grateful to the NEA for this recognition and support,” says Executive Director, Shannon Stratton, “Ox-Bow is always looking for ways to evolve and strengthen our program to meet the needs of artists where they are at today and the NEA’s acknowledgement by way of this grant affirms that we are on the right track. We are so appreciative of this funding as it helps us to continue to establish Longform as a mainstay of our programming.”

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency is an arts-based nonprofit with a rich legacy of empowering and investing in artists. Their year around programming welcomes degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the arts. The 115 acre campus – located alongside and protected by the dunes, forests, and waters of Saugatuck – cultivates a space that does not simply host its residents but enhances their practice. Both its facilities and faculty edify their longstanding mission: to serve as a network of creative resources, people, and ideas amidst an energizing natural environment inspired by its rich artistic history and fueled by the potential of a vital future.

Banner photo by Natia Ser (Summer Fellow, 2023).

Press Release: Ox-Bow Announces Culinary Artists-in-Residence

Ox-Bow Announces Culinary Artists-in-Residence

SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN (May 9, 2024) – Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency announces the inaugural cohort of a new Culinary Artists-in-Residence program. This year-long program intends to bridge artists, food, and community both on Ox-Bow’s campus and beyond through a unique annual residency program for artists working at the intersection of food and art. This year’s artists are Edward Cabral, Sara Clugage, Dan Fethke, Hyun Jung Jun, and MAGNET.

“Artist residencies have always built community around food,” says Ox-Bow’s Executive Director, Shannon Stratton, “so naturally, it made sense to make food a bigger part of our programming. And in the studio, artists have been working with food and hospitality for years, so inviting a focused cohort together to experiment, collaborate with our kitchen, and produce some special programming was a natural fit for Ox-Bow.”

The residency invites the selected artists to campus in three installments during Summer 2024, Winter 2025, and Summer 2025. The artists will be supported with stipends, travel, and room and board at Ox-Bow. 

The yearlong program begins with individual one-week residencies during the summer and fall of 2024 that each culminate in a meal-based public event. The group will reassemble in winter 2025 for a 10-day residency and will conclude their tenure with a one or two day Art on the Meadow workshop, available for public enrollment in the summer of 2025. This first cohort will work with Ox-Bow’s team to help vision the program going forward, offering their insights and feedback.

Culinary Team Member Ren Rodriguez prepares a plate for the annual Field of Vision Benefit. Photo by Jamie Kelter Davis.

The new initiative plays upon many of Ox-Bow’s traditions, including their appreciation for the culinary arts and the organization's belief that quality food is central to fueling and inspiring artists.

“Ox-Bow is about building community,” Stratton continues, “so when we think about what new initiatives or programs to develop, we are always considering what we already are, what we already do, and what we already have that we can offer to more people. Food and shared meals have always been part of our legacy, so we are excited to invite more people to the table.”

Tickets for the public programs can be purchased at www.ox-bow.org/culinary-events.

About the artists:

Edward Cabral is an artist, baker, and maker. Born 1987 in Indiana, Cabral is currently based in New York. Cabral previously lived in Chicago, Illinois and has spent time throughout central Indiana, west Texas, and Kentucky. His work has been featured on Food Network, Disney+, and galleries through the midwest and New York.

Sara Clugage’s art practice focuses on economic and political issues in craft and food. She is Editor-in-Chief of Dilettante Army, an online magazine for visual culture and critical theory.

She has most recently been core faculty for the MA in Critical Craft Studies program at Warren Wilson College and her most recent publication is the 2021 monograph from the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, titled New Recipes: Cooking, Craft, and Performance. Sara is currently at work on a book project about Jell-O, animacy, and abstraction.

Daniel Pravit Fethke is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator from New York's Hudson Valley. Teaching is a central part of his practice, and he regularly facilitates workshops, cooking classes, and creative gatherings that center food and recipes as ways to explore identity, narrative, and culture. Daniel co-founded the mutual aid Thai+Chinese food pop-up Angry Papaya, and has hosted arts workshops at Dia:Beacon, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency. He recently published an autobiographical Thai-American cookbook through Pratt Institute, where he also received his MFA in Fine Arts in 2023. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Born in South Korea and based in Chicago, Hyun Jung Jun is an artist whose installations are measures and meditations which take up more time than they do space. Working with commonplace commodities such as candles, bread, wooden structures, Jun’s work borrows from familiar, domestic language to describe and search the ornate identities of our individuality and culture. In recent years, Jun has expanded her work to include edible forms in a cake project titled Dream Cake Test Kitchen. Jun received her BFA at SAIC and an MFA in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. Her recent exhibitions include Goldfinch, LVL3, the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelly Foundation with Chicago Artists Coalition, No Place Gallery, Hans Gallery, The Drawing Room at Arts Club of Chicago and EXPO Chicago. Jun is one of Newcity’s breakout artists for 2021.

MAGNET (b. 1993) is an undisciplined artist, pastry chef, and disrupter working at the intersection of food and art anarchiving Black servitude and hospitality in the U.S. and the Caribbean. MAGNET creates works that embrace embodiment, play, and community collaborations. MAGNET's intention is to expand upon understandings of domesticity and carework using cake installations and food pop-ups, rugmaking, print, and painting. They have shared work and spoken on panels at the Museum of Contemporary Art: Chicago, Williams College Museum of Art, Women Made Gallery, Recess Art, Happy Gallery Chicago, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Chicago Read/Write Library, and the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel. MAGNET is also the founder of THEIRS!, a variety performance night that highlighted queer and trans artists of color who are often overlooked and underrepresented.

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency is an arts-based nonprofit with a rich legacy of empowering and investing in artists. Their year around programming welcomes degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the arts. The 115 acre campus – located alongside and protected by the dunes, forests, and waters of Saugatuck – cultivates a space that does not simply host its residents but enhances their practice. Both its facilities and faculty edify their longstanding mission:to serve as a network of creative resources, people, and ideas amidst a energizing natural environment inspired by its rich artistic history and fueled by the potential of a vital future.

Ox-Bow School of Art Announces New Award in Honor of Peter Williams and in recognition of BIPOC Alum.

SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN (January 18, 2023) –  Ox-Bow School of Art announces the Peter Williams Award. This new award will be presented annually to a BIPOC Alum whose teaching and/or mentorship exemplifies excellence and care for the student experience, life-long learning, and creative exploration. Each selected awardee will nominate a non-traditional and/or young artist for a scholarship to attend Pre-College Program, Art on the Meadow, or a non-credit course the following summer.

The award is named in memory of former faculty member Peter Williams who invested deeply in the students of Ox-Bow and embodied these same virtues. The award was first introduced in December 2022 in Chicago at Ox-Bow’s benefit, Winter Break.  

“When we learned of Peter’s passing, we also learned from his former students how deeply he had impacted their lives,” said Shannon Stratton, Ox-Bow’s Executive Director. “We wanted to celebrate Peter’s legacy and the experience of artists studying at Ox-Bow in an intimate and intensive environment, where faculty have the potential to really change an artist’s practice in just a short time. We also wanted to honor and amplify the many contributions of BIPOC artists to our educational community and the educational art communities nationwide.”    

Williams was an educator, artist, and activist who not only impacted Ox-Bow, but shaped the Arts community on a national level. He taught The Portrait as Starting Point at Ox-Bow during the summers of 2015 and 2017. At our 2022 Winter Break Benefit, we celebrated the legacy of Williams and the influence he has had on Ox-Bow’s campus and Alumni. Following his passing, the Peter Williams Estate gifted a portion of Williams’s library to our campus. The Ox-Bow community misses the departed artist and educator and will be forever grateful for the impact he left on our campus, an impact and legacy which is still ongoing. 

In Williams’s works, his paintings were an extension of his voice and convictions as an activist.

One of his last works that received significant attention was the George Flloyd Triptych; however, Williams had been speaking out against mass incarceration and police brutality long before it gained a new level of national attention in 2020. Williams made it his life’s work to bring attention to racial and systematic injustice: doing so in his lectures, interviews, and paintings. Just as the colors of Williams’s paintings are unabashedly bold and direct, so too was the artist’s intent each time he approached a new canvas. Over the course of his career, Williams was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship, Artists’ Legacy Foundation Award, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Peter Williams Award will next be given at the Winter Break benefit in Chicago. Nominations for future award winners, including the 2023 recipient are welcomed.

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency is an arts-based nonprofit with a rich legacy of empowering and investing in artists. Their year around programming welcomes degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the arts. The 115 acre campus – located alongside and protected by the dunes, forests, and waters of Saugatuck – cultivates a space that does not simply host its residents but enhances their practice. Both its facilities and faculty edify their longstanding mission: to serve as a network of creative resources, people, and ideas amidst an energizing natural environment inspired by its rich artistic history and fueled by the potential of a vital future.

Featured Image: Headshot from Peter Williams estate via nytimes.com

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (November 3, 2022) DOUGLAS, MI — Ox-Bow School of Art awarded a three-year Special Project grant from the Efroymson Family Fund.

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.

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency is an arts-based nonprofit with a rich legacy of empowering and investing in artists. Their year around programming welcomes degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the arts. The 115-acre campus – located alongside and protected by the dunes, forests, and waters of Saugatuck – cultivates a space that does not simply host its residents but enhances their practice. Both its facilities and faculty edify their longstanding mission: to serve as a network of creative resources, people, and ideas amidst an energizing natural environment inspired by its rich artistic history and fueled by the potential of a vital future.

Ox-Bow Announces Residence Evil Artists, Creeps-in-Residence

Ox-Bow Goes to Hell 2021 - Photo by Nick Funk

SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN (October 11, 2021) – Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency announces the 2021 Artists of Residence Evil. This Halloween, Ox-Bow Goes to Hell for a spectacularly spooky weekend. Fueling the fright are artists Keil Troisi (Sunbury, Pennsylvania); Teagan Walters (Chicago, Illinois); Dorothy Melander-Dayton (Sante Fe, New Mexico); Nathan Margoni (Benton Harbor, Michigan); Gurtie Hansell (Chicago, Illinois); Kierstynn Holman (Grand Rapids, Michigan); Salvatore Gulino (Roseville, Michigan); Grace Makuch and Chris Bailoni (Chicago, Illinois); and Eliza Fernand (Grand Rapids, Michigan). Trails and haunted houses are open to the public for all ages October 29, 30 and 31.

Each Artist or “creep-in-residence” will turn one of Ox-Bow’s historic cabins or a portion of the Crow’s Nest Trail into spine-chilling haunts. Residents will design and build their haunts with small-scale budgets and found materials on campus. Each installation will be infused with the artists’ own background and interests, whether that be stage design, science fiction, sound engineering, drag performance, puppetry, or environmental awareness. Spectacles will feature classic ghouls from devils to the undead, as well as Ox-Bow originals such as The Great Black Heron, the Portrait Geist, and the Ox-Bow Paradox.

Mac Akin, Ox-Bow’s campus manager and a founder of the Spooky Trail offers a sneak peak of the event: “The creative and twisted minds at Ox-Bow will bring to life, or maybe unlife, another set of creepy, beautiful and bizarre scenes along the Spooky Trail. There may be some returning spectres previous guests may have seen before, some of the ghosts really like it here and tend to stick around… A few of our cabins become very, let's say, active around Halloween and we and our ghostly residents are excited to invite a fresh batch of souls to an evening they'll never forget.”

Ox-Bow first offered this event to the public in 2019, when staff introduced the first haunted cabin. In an attempt to create a safe and spooky event, they moved the event outdoors in 2020 and created the Spooky Trail. This season, Ox-Bow is delighted to bring back both events for the spookiest weekend yet.

Returning patrons can expect fresh additions at this year’s festivities when visiting the Dark Carnival and Cavern Tavern, where guests can escape the haunt to play games or sip a seasonal cocktail. Saturday’s celebrations will include a Graveyard Rave on the Ox-Bow meadow. Ox-Bow encourages guests of all ages, but notes that Sunday will cater to the youngest ghouls. At the Sunday Halloween matinee, Ox-Bow Goes to Heck, younger guests can enjoy trick-or-treating at a family-friendly haunt.

“There's something magical about facing the unknown even if it's all just pretend,” says Mac Akin. “With care and safety in mind, I hope that the Halloween hellscapes that Ox-Bow creates now and beyond spark a fire of curiosity in the hearts of all who come through, even if sometimes it looks terrifying.”

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency is an arts-based nonprofit with a rich legacy of empowering and investing in artists. Their year around programming welcomes degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the arts. The 115 acre campus – located alongside and protected by the dunes, forests, and waters of Saugatuck – cultivates a space that does not simply host its residents but enhances their practice. Both its facilities and faculty edify their longstanding mission: to serve as a network of creative resources, people, and ideas amidst a energizing natural environment inspired by its rich artistic history and fueled by the potential of a vital future.

Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency Announces Summer Benefit Concert Line-Up

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (June 27, 2022) Saugatuck, MI — Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency Announces Summer Benefit Concert Line-Up

SAUGATUCK, MICHIGAN (June 17, 2022) – Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency is excited to share their first summer concert line-up featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Joan Shelley, Bitchin Bajas perform ‘Switched on Ra’, Marisa Anderson, Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek, Rosali, Bill Mackay, and a Corbett vs. Dempsey DJ Set, on Saturday, July 9th from 2:00-9:00pm EST.

The event is family friendly, offering food, drink, and a screen-printing experience. VIP tickets are $175 (includes limited food and drink tickets, snacks and NA beverages, and special accessed areas), general admission tickets are $100, and minor tickets are $25. All proceeds go to support Ox-Bow.

The curated line-up by The Storehouse will take place on Ox-Bow’s campus along the shores of the Ox- Bow lagoon. The Storehouse, co-founded by duo Penny Duffy and Michael Slaboch in Galien, Michigan, is a Southwest Michigan-based events company. The organization primarily focuses on orchestrating casual, intimate gatherings.

” By fostering partnerships with other small operations in our region, we can create our own alternate reality that has very little in common with the broader corporate sphere that dominates other parts of the country. It’s very empowering and enlightening to be a part of this communal process,” Michael says.

Tickets are available to the general public for purchase at www.ox-bow.org/benefit-concert.

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency is an arts-based nonprofit with a rich legacy of empowering and investing in artists. Their year around programming welcomes degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the arts. The 115-acre campus – located alongside and protected by the dunes, forests, and waters of Saugatuck – cultivates a space that does not simply host its residents but enhances their practice. Both its facilities and faculty edify their longstanding mission: to serve as a network of creative resources, people, and ideas amidst an energizing natural environment inspired by its rich artistic history and fueled by the potential of a vital future

Photography by Jamie Kelter Davis.