On Friday we headed up to Saugatuck, MI to see Ox Bow’s open studios.  This was the first stop on our journey, but also a spot where I hadn’t really been able to contact anyone before hand to prep them for the badgering that was about to occur.  (  ;)  )  We left Grand Rapids and headed south for an hour until we came across the lovely town of Saugatuck, where we found:

 

The campus was on the edge of this amazingly lovely lake, where we found many other people wandering around to visit the open studios.

 

We had to wander for a bit to find someone who looked like they might be able to answer my questions — which at this point, are still tentative and being developed.  I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel fully one hundred percent fully researched enough for this trip, but it does help when I know where and who I’m supposed to be questioning.

 

During our wanders though, we came across some pretty delightful things.

 

And one of the open studios was full of comics some of the ladies at Ox Bow had stayed up all night and drawn, including a contribute-a-drawing wall.

 

 

But what about my actual project–talking to people about how creativity, generosity, and community intertwine?

I eventually just decided to ask a man holding a walkie talkie where I could find someone who might be interested in musing on these issues with me.  Turns out it was him — Nathan Tonning is working at Ox Bow over the summer as a ceramic technician, but he’s working on his Ceramics MFA back in Montana.  We talked about how Ox Bow was a great beginning place for understanding the connections between craft and communnity, as it can really be felt there in the many layers of people that are brought to the area.  He also discussed how he had been thinking about the qualities of the handmade, as ceramics is something that starts out with literally no inherent value (as mud), but through the crafting becomes a unique and valuable object.

Then he pointed us over to the communal campfire, where several outgoing students were relaxing and taking in the last few days of their classes.  Two ladies in particular, Tiana and Lauren, were really expressive in discussing their time at Ox Bow.  They are both from Chicago, at SAIC (where you can get Ox Bow classes accredited through), but were drawn to the area for the instant sense of community that Ox Bow provides.  Tiana explained that it was even her second year to the camp (this year as a TA), because Ox Bow was a slice of a mini-utopia.  They mentioned also that the dance parties there were particularly amazing, in large part because the sense of openness at Ox Bow.

It was also really delightful to see how people lit up at bringing up these questions, whether or not they had had time to think about them before hand or had any definite answers themselves.

We didn’t get to talk to a lot of people at Ox Bow, but the ones we did were extremely welcoming and willing to give these questions a try.  (So sorry I didn’t have any photos of these folks!  I’ll keep this better in mind in the future).

It was really an excellent start and gave me a lot to think about for our future visits on this trip.

Then as we were getting ready to leave, I went and hopped over to take a glance at the glass blowing demos as the night went on–a beautiful way to end our visit.

Thanks everyone!

 

Posted on Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 at 11:41 am under "other".
Follow comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.