For more than a century, the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency in Saugatuck, Michigan, has operated a unique program that blends the elements of an educational institution, a retreat, and an artist-built community. Designed to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and critical rigor, its Longform, Hold Space, Summer, Culinary, and Process/Process residencies provide artists with the time and space to engage with a wide range of practices in a serene environment where the Tallmadge Woods Nature Preserve meets the Kalamazoo River. Ox-Bow is dedicated to the preservation of time and space for arts education, research, practice, and community building for artists at all stages of their artistic journey.
Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency
An Artist-in-Residence at work in the Ox-Bow metals studio.
Summer Residency, 2025.
Photo by Nolan Zunk.
An artist explains their work to a residency facilitator. Longform Residency, Fall 2023.
Photo by Natia Ser.
Participants from Catalyze gather for a group photo in the
Ox-Bow papermaking studio.
Hold Space Retreat Fall 2024.
Photo by Natia Ser.
An Artist-in-Residence takes a multidisciplinary approach in the
Ox-Bow ceramics studio. Longform Residency, Fall 2023
Photo by Natia Ser.
Artists-in-Residence wave from the Ox-Bow dock. Longform Residency Fall 2024. Photo by Natia Ser.
See Also
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”