Something for Everyone at OFAI

Think you have to be great at art, or at least experienced, to enjoy a Fall Arts Institute workshop?  Think again!  This fall, over half our workshops are open to true beginners or novices. 

As a kid, was your macaroni artwork always the worst in the class?  When you handed your mom a drawing, did she say "Awwww, it's pretty!  What is it?"  Then consider taking Richard Hull's workshop, "Drawing for Beginners," November 1 - 4.

In this workshop, we'll use perceptual drawing exercises to address how we see, and memory drawing exercise to understand how our perception is affected by memory.  We'll engage in a wide range of drawing techniques, both additive and subtractive. Whether these exercises lead to abstraction or representation, the ultimate goal will be to make something you never thought you would.

Born in Oklahoma City, Richard Hull now lives and works in Chicago.  He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1977 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1979, he received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While still in graduate school, he had his first one-person show in New York at the Phyllis Kind Gallery. Since that time, Hull has had more than 40 one-person shows. His paintings may be found in many private and public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Neuberger Museum of Art in Westchester. New York, and the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. He is represented in Chicago by Western Exhibitions Gallery.

Enrollment for Richard's workshop begins Monday, August 20 at www.oaiquartz.org. 

OFAI Featured Faculty: Connie Imboden

Connie Imboden

Baltimore, Maryland
http://connieimboden.com/

Connie Imboden will teach the Fall Arts Institute "Digital Photography: Illusions" at Quartz Mountain, October 11 - 14.  Connie is represented in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Bibliothèque Nationales in Paris, as well as in many other public and private collections throughout Europe and the Americas. Imboden has exhibited her photographs in an extensive range of group and solo shows at galleries and museums throughout the United States, South America, Europe, and China. Imboden teaches and inspires colleagues and students alike in her quest to push the photographic medium to its highest level. She currently teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where her experience as a photographer began. Imboden has served as an instructor at workshops around the world, including The Maine Photographic Workshops and the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in France.

If you attend Connie's workshop, you'll explore illusions.  Illusions are fascinating, and working with illusions in photography can be a very interesting way of working with visual language. The power and danger of illusions is that we see them as absolute truth. We trust our eyes -- “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” The class is about ways of exploring, discovering, developing, and utilizing the influence of illusions beyond mere tricks of seeing to compelling and poetic means of communication.  You'll employ illusionistic techniques through assignments, discussions, and critiques. The course is open to anyone with a basic knowledge of their camera’s operations.

Connie taught photography at the 2011 Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, and we are excited to welcome her back to Quartz Mountain!  Click here to meet all the OFAI faculty, or learn more about the Fall Arts Institute.

Discounts on Fall Arts Institute Tuition!

Do you have a digital camera and no idea how to use it?  Do you have a great idea for a children’s book?  Have you ever wanted to try your hand at painting, drawing, or printmaking?  Then head to Quartz Mountain this fall for an all-inclusive four-day retreat at the Oklahoma Fall Arts Institute (OFAI).  Workshops are offered for all ability levels, from true beginners to professional artists.  New this year, private school educators receive a 50% discount on tuition, and members of certain arts organizations receive 20% discounts.  Public school educators still receive full scholarships to OFAI.

OFAI participants spend their days receiving instruction from nationally renowned artists from across the U.S.  In addition to learning about their chosen art form, participants can attend presentations by faculty artists in a variety of artistic disciplines.  In the evenings, participants can take advantage of open studio time, attend an elective activity, or simply relax and enjoy the getaway.

OFAI is held at the Quartz Mountain Arts & Conference Center in southwest Oklahoma. An ideal location for arts immersion, the resort offers the amenities and comforts of a fine hotel inside a scenic state park.  OFAI is an all-inclusive experience, with all meals and lodging included with tuition (alcoholic beverages not included).  OFAI occurs October 11 – 14, October 25 – 28, and November 1 – 4, with enrollment beginning Monday, August 20. 

New this year, OFAI offers discounts to private school educators and arts supporters, while continuing to provide full scholarships to Oklahoma public school teachers.  Oklahoma private school educators can attend for a total cost of $315.50 ($345.50 for visual arts classes), including all meals and lodging in a shared room.  Members of the 16 arts organizations listed below can attend for a total cost of $490 ($520 for visual arts classes).  Private rooms are an additional $100. 

Current members of the following arts organizations receive a 20% discount:

Allied Arts
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
Gilcrease Museum
Goddard Art Center
International Photography Hall of Fame
Lachenmeyer Arts Center
Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
Oklahoma Black Museum and Performing Arts Center
Oklahoma Community Theatre Association
Oklahoma Camera Club
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition
Philbrook Museum of Art
Ponca City Art Center
Price Tower Arts Center

To see the OFAI schedule, course descriptions, faculty bios, and enrollment information, visit www.oaiquartz.org.

We All Left Our Hearts at Quartz Mountain

Now that OSAI is over, all the kindred spirits that made Quartz Mountain so special have scattered on the four winds.  Students have returned to big cities and tiny towns across Oklahoma, and faculty, staff, and counselors are back in New York, Los Angeles, and many places in between. 


The PAC is silent and dark, the classrooms are locked and empty, and the Café is back to the usual quiet clusters of locals.  At home, we find ourselves wondering what to do with our free time and telling camp jokes that no one understands.  Now that we’ve caught up on sleep, we feel nostalgic for late night cabin meetings and early morning walks to class. 


It’s jarring to go from our little arts oasis to the real world, with all its demands and distractions.  We miss the close friends we made, and we wonder if they have the same strange, empty feeling we do. 


How can a few glorified hills in the middle of nowhere have such a magnetic pull?  How can one place embrace the spirit, dreams, and passions of so many people?  How can two weeks change your entire life?  


That’s the mystery and the magic of “The Mountain,” and that’s why we all left our hearts at Quartz Mountain.  Until you can return and reclaim it, reminisce, keep in touch, and give back.  #qmrocks

Photo courtesy of McNeese Fitzgerald Associates

 Our guest blogger is Catherine Roberts, PR Counselor.
 

Today’s blog post will get a trifle sentimental. I’m writing as a former OSAI student, a creative writer from 2006. It’s seldom that I practice my craft these days—I’m a journalist, so I tend to stick to facts. Nothing has compelled me to begin again to write creatively more than returning to Quartz Mountain as a staff member. That’s because the work of the students here—not just in creative writing, but across all the disciplines—inspires. But instead of telling you about it, I’ll let the art speak for itself.

The following poems are the collected works of the OSAI creative writers, composed for inclusion in the centerpieces of the tables during this year’s Visitors’ Day.

let your hands be a resting place for time

and rejoice in the aging of your body

let your skin grow rough from your dances in the wind

and celebrate the grace that will come to crease your eyes

from the depth and frequency of laughter

exalt the blaze of seasons

for you will not fade with the fading of the light

so let your  mind burn and falter

when it is best to fall

revel in the salt of your mistaking

because there is the world to be tasted

taste it

—Alex Rivas

Steeplechase Road

Let there be children who

drink orange soda through sour patch straws

and raise dandelions in Mama’s glass bowls.

Let there be children who

lay rusted pennies to sleep on train tracks

and carry thin copper luckthings on thread.

Let there be children who

weave muddy caskets from grass to send a

friend, bumblebee, down the creek.

Let there be children who

climb electrical towers to watch the sunset

and hold nervous currents at their toes.

—Alison Liu

Let there be a soothing slap of skin parting from the gaudy protection

Of the band-aid decorated with the heroes who fought on

A cartoon you never watched

Let there be a cavity in gravity you’ll miss in ten years

When you can no longer fly on construction paper wings

Instead staring out an office window

Let there be rooms that forget the alphabet

With white washed walls that can no longer spell your name

Let there be water that tastes of his favourite flower which died in the glass

Before your thirst was born.

—An-Li Bogan

Where Petals Go

Let there be an unpaved road

with a field beside it and a sky dunked in pinks and purples until the blue drowned above

Let there be daisies in that field

floating in the grass like spirits tied down with green string

Let there be wind to find the daisy

to touch its face with cooling lips and cherish its petals enough to take

Let there be you to watch the petals like white flames

leaving smoke not allowed to touch the sky

And let there be you to free the last petal that clings like heartbreak

so it can move on to higher things

Let there be another wind to help you do the same

—Brooke R. Busse

Let there be lunch lines and clusters of students with red trays.

Let there be rain and clouds that block the Twin Peeks from view and cast a grey shadow across the Oklahoma Arts Institute,

giving the photography students and their cameras a break from the sun.

Let the acting students sit in the lobby in silence as they memorize monologues.

Let the dancers stretch their legs as the sun drifts through the windows.

Let the Rubix Cube hidden on campus be found before nightfall.

Let it solve itself.

Let me write like the Quartz Mountains that rise up and down against the sky.

Let the mountains fill up with green grasses growing on its sides like grass in a bowl.

—Candace Osterhout

Let there always be caramels in your grandmother’s glass bowl.

Let there be a fat cat to sleep in your lap,

and an old dog to lay at your feet.

Let there be lemonade summers and hot chocolate winters.

Let there never be a time when you can’t come home

and sit on your childhood swing.

Let there be Snuggies, ramen noodles and mystery novels.

Let there be days in which you just do nothing.

Let there be sunlight to wake you up some mornings.

Let there be scary movies and friends to watch them with.

Let there be rain.

But most of all, let there be medicine to heal your body,

and art to heal your soul.

—Erin McCoy

Let there be quartz and people who keep the door open for those

coming out of a crowded concert.

Let there be daisies and marigolds and azaleas.

Let there be jazzy trombones, wrapped Andes mints,

and cats with question mark tails.

May there be casual hellos and soothing cellos.

Give us fountain pens and fantasy books to feel through.

May there be homemade Valentine cards.

Let there be mothers, water,

fathers; let there be children who sing in showers

and men who rent tuxedos.

Let there be the color brown.

Let there be breath.

—Giselle Willis

Let there be hands to create music, words, ideas.

And people will know and invite the owners of the hands to a cradle of stone and foliage.

And the trees will bow and the rocks will tremble in their presence, because the hands

will make them again.

Let the does graze below the bridge on the uncut grass, knowing that no hands will harm

them, and they will be alive.

And the hands will meet other hands, shake, and flourish in their craft; create a beat to

dance and live to.

And the hands are surely placed by the words of a woodsman, encouraging them to

live deliberately.

Let heroes, heavens, and spirits of Helios flow from their fingertips and erupt in song,

heard as far into the universe as the dust of Saturn’s rings.

The hands will find new ways and the people will come to see.

—Madisyn Bowen

Let the doe ever wander green meadows where the dandelions go

Like lions without teeth or claws, each seeds small parachute ready to break its fall.

Silence of the meadows as a haven where the heavens see foals knobby knees.

Let this be sacred ground where nature comes to lie while earth whispers lullabies.

The brook where the doe and her fawn pause to drink,

The shuffling of grass and of leaves in trees and they rustle in the breeze.

Let these tender songs ever comfort those forlorn, the lonely and the lowly,

When the constancy of morning like the certainty of night are to never cease

And let green remain.

—Meredith Winn

Why Do We Let Them Let?

Let—to allow—it is a word of a different color than timshel—thou mayest—less gracious, more furious, a salt-green flexing rather than its nebulous deep. It is not the game of command, ask permission, and the generous timshel—it is, as in, let us go—let us ride our bikes like horses and tilt at the telephone poles. Let us build our medicines, locomotives, bridges—

Let—

Let us—

Let us spring furiously from the chthonian body of our home, go!

Go! Rocket—let go gravity—

Burn you trillion cosmic lanterns, spin, other earths. We see you if the gods will

Let us—

go!

—Erin Fuller

Let there be dirt- crumbling, warm, soft

smelling of growth,

pushing forward new life, taking on old.

Let there be silent mornings

alone with a dainty tea pot steeping

and a simple saucer of browned bread.

Allow words to spill forth from pens- an outpouring

 transforming and transformed.

Allow there to be pages, strong enough to cut

 and carry as a vehicle the words,

taking them where they are necessary.

Let there be sound, a taxi bleating, a sprinkler clicking rhythmically along,

 a murmur as  trees converse with one another, a cacophony saying please.

Allow there to be grass, a cushion to lie on,

and the residents building in their own universe.

—Bethany McLemore

Remember your favorite word and remember who gave it to you, precious as any physical gift.

Remember the books and people that changed how ideas appear to you, outside insight is an invaluable thing.

Remember the smell of breakfast, mornings spent among the rustle of readallaboutit’s and the feeling of time spread around you.

Remember your favorite pair of shoes. Impractical, outrageously priced, your mother clucking her tongue, not this time.

Remember your hands, they are the first to meet a new friend, everything is written in your hands.

Remember how much time you spent trying to please others, think about how often you played the kazoo. Weigh the importance of each.

Remember the first time you were told to grow up. Act your age.

Now forget it.

—Tori Hack

Let there be Orwells

and Hemingways

Plath

Fitzgeralds Shakespeares

Dickinsons Poe

Let there be contradictions

Abstractions

Complexities

And then let there be words

too simple

for simple.

Let there be poems while I’m brushing my teeth

And stanzas while I sleep

And meter in my shower

And syllables

In every moment

That words

Can barely touch

Let there be Holy Sundays

And let there be Sundays

I set out to write the

King James Holy Bible

And this is how

The words have settled.

            —Evan Rathjen

You can hear more from the Creative Writing class during ONSTAGE Weekend performances. Creative Writing performs tomorrow at 4 p.m.

Our guest blogger today is improvisation assistant Caroline Horton.

            As the improvisation assistant, I was able to see a side of the students that most faculty, staff, and counselors weren’t able to experience. The students were able to take a break from their disciplines, let loose, and most importantly, laugh.

            Regina Saisi, a native San Franciscan, has made the trek to Quartz Mountain for years now to teach the improv classes. Regina is a part of a three-person traveling improv troupe based out of San Francisco.  She has been in the improv theater world for more than twenty-five years and has no intentions of quitting anytime soon.

            There were three improv sessions every day, each comprised of students from different disciplines: choir, ballet and modern; acting, creative writing, drawing/printmaking, and photography; and orchestra. It was a delight not only to see the students lose all inhibitions and have some fun, but also to see the different disciplines working together. Each group developed their own sort of improv “personality.” The choir, ballet, and modern group were completely different than the acting, drawing/printmaking, creative writing, and photography group, from sense of humor to subject matter.

            Regina would sometimes tailor the exercises to fit each group. This either meant using an exercise that would be in the comfort zone of the disciplines in that group or completely out of the comfort zone. In this way, she was able to challenge the students and stimulate their imaginations. Men would play women and women would play men, creative writers would sing, and choir students would dance. The students learned that anything goes in improv and the goofier and less inhibited, the better.

            There were struggles in the first few classes. Students were afraid of not being funny or being made fun of for what they chose to do. Regina made all at ease with an exercise where every student had to go to one another, throw their hands in the air, and yell, “I FAILED!” She taught that it is okay to fail, everyone fails, and it is just part of the process. After this exercise, the students were more comfortable and relaxed with their peers. This made for an even better time.

            A favorite exercise across all groups was a role-playing one. In this exercise, two students have to explain to a teacher why their friend was late to school. While this explanation is happening, the “late” student is waiting outside so that (s)he does not hear the ludicrous explanation. Then, the “late” student has to come in and try to tell the teacher why (s)he was late, trying to corroborate the story the friends just told. How is the student supposed to do this? Only by watching the friends act out the wild scenario they had built. Regina said the crazier the story, the more fun it is, and this was definitely true. One group came up with this story:

The student was late because his grandmother got “bronchlotia” (an illness, they explained, that is a combination of getting bronchitis and then being allergic to lotion). An easy cure for this bronchlotia would be to go to the hospital, but the grandmother was a Christian Scientist and did not believe in hospitals, so INSTEAD, the late student had to ice down his grandmother with a mixture of ice and salt every few minutes, and THAT was why he was late.

Now, imagine two students acting that out and having a completely clueless student try to guess the story… hilarious. Not only were the actors having fun, but the audience was, too. The students could not stop laughing.

            A truly beautiful moment in improv happened on the last day with the choir, ballet, and modern group. The exercise Regina was doing involved her playing music randomly and then one, two, three, or all of the students dancing to it in whatever fashion they wanted. Everyone was having fun, some choir students pretending to do ballet, ballet students acting like they were at a hoppin’ club, modern students doing tribal dances, and then the song “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 came on and every single student started to sing. There was a mixture of beautifully trained chorus voices with perfect pitch hitting breathtaking notes, and the obviously untrained students belting it out, not caring in the least that they couldn’t sing at all. The choir was dancing and the dancers were singing, and it was an amazing moment of unity. Their disciplines collided, and you could tell a connection formed between them that had not been there before.

            When the class was over, girls and boys left the room arm in arm, singing, skipping, and laughing. The transformation that happened in fifty-five minutes was stunning. It is cases like that that prove the pure power and magic that OSAI has to offer.

Victoria Harrell, OSAI PR Counselor, is today's guest blogger.

Lights, Camera, Action!

As a counselor here at Quartz Mountain, with students working on projects all around you, you may be asked to participate.  The film and video students have been working in small groups on a few short films that will debut on Saturday, June 23 here at Quartz Mountain.  I was fortunate enough to be asked to play a small role in one of these short films alongside my good friend and fellow counselor, Corey Davidson.

While filming, I tried to pay close attention to the whole process, and what I noticed was how much has to be done to get just one shot.  Even the scene that we filmed outside with natural light required a handful of people helping.

From holding a gold reflector steady, to holding the microphone above us, to precariously balancing on a chair to hold a piece of cardboard to block out the shadows cast from the rafters above, everything had to be set just right.

The students were allowed a lot of freedom as far as the scenes, with assistant film faculty Beau Leland asking a few thought-provoking questions to lead the students in the right direction.  I was thoroughly impressed with the professionalism of the students, and I appreciated being part of the process.

Good luck, film students, and I am anticipating a fantastic movie premieres this weekend!  The screening is free and open to the public, and will take place on Saturday, June 23 at 4 pm at the Robert M. Kerr Performing Arts Center at Quartz Mountain.