Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists' Residency

Founded in 1910, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency is a separately incorporated nonprofit organization offering year-round programs that cater to degree-seeking students, professional artists, and those new to the field. Students from schools across the country visit Ox-Bow to study and make art on the school’s 115-acre campus in Saugatuck, Michigan, 150 miles northeast of Chicago. 

Ox-Bow offers courses for non-credit and credit that can be used toward School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) degree requirements, including SAIC’s off-campus study requirement. Work scholarships and financial aid opportunities are available through Ox-Bow.

Ox-Bow offers one-, two-, and three-week intensive courses in a variety of disciplines including painting and drawing, printmaking, glassblowing and casting, sculpture and metals, papermaking, ceramics, and fibers. Students can hone their skills and develop new ones in a spacious studio with northern light for painting and drawing; a print shop with intaglio, lithograph, collagraph, woodcut, monotype, and screenprinting capabilities; a papermaking studio; a recently expanded glass studio; an open-air metals studio, perfect for both the light metals used in jewelry making and the heavy metals used for blacksmithing; and a ceramics studio with 12 wheels and a variety of firing options, including a 50-foot car kiln, a raku pit, and a wood fire kiln. All of Ox-Bow's studios are open 24 hours a day.