A case of nerves accompanied the 72-year-old grandmother
to her first glass-casting class. But each day Markland left behind
daily routine at her Saugatuck home for Ox-Bow, she found comfort
alongside other beginners, aided by seasoned artists. Beyond learning
about the properties of glass, she learned about herself.
“For me to do it at all was a personal — and
unexpected, you might say — accomplishment,” Markland
reflected.
Like Ox-Bow, Interlochen Center for the Arts just
south of Traverse City and Cranbrook Academy of Art north of
Detroit are treasured islands of inspiration, not only for accomplished
artists who reside and work on campus but also “everyday” art
lovers like Markland.
Ox-Bow: Informal Inspiration
An 11 a.m. Sunday brunch is underway in Ox-Bow
Inn’s main dining hall, where full-time summer residents — Ox-Bow
fellows — sit together at a long table, passing around
the morning’s New York Times. Lingering over fried potatoes
and scrambled eggs they banter.
They’re joined by other students — some
beginners, others more seasoned — in various studio areas:
ceramics, glass, painting and drawing, papermaking, print and
metals. From the functional to the sculptural, traditional to
contemporary, and representational to conceptual, Ox-Bow’s
courses are just as diverse.
“One of the amazing things about Ox-Bow is
that it’s so nurturing of artists and those who are interested
in learning about art at all levels,” observed Jason Kalajainen,
Ox-Bow’s executive director. “Someone who comes just
to take a painting class will be here with some of the best painters
in the country. Yet, it’s a very casual place. There aren’t
the formal lines you might find at different academic settings.”
That’s because formality kicked its shoes
off here almost more than a century ago.
In 1910, Ox-Bow founders Frederick Fursman and
Walter Marshall Clute — artists and teachers from the Art
Institute of Chicago — broke from industrialized Chicago’s
havoc for the fresh air and open spaces of Saugatuck along the
Kalamazoo River. Smitten with the area’s rural isolation
and natural beauty, they began teaching summer painting classes
at a farm a mile or so upstream from today’s campus.
By 1914, their classes became a school housed in
what evolved from a small home built in the 1860s on an ox-bow
shaped bend of the Kalamazoo River into the 20-room Riverside
Hotel. By then, commercial trading and logging trends in the
region had declined, the river’s channel was altered to
ebb directly into Lake Michigan, and Saugatuck had reemerged
as an art and leisure destination. Upon his death, Thomas Eddy
Tallmadge — architectural historian, renowned architect
and enamored Ox-Bow patron — gifted the school with 110
acres, expanding its allure as a creative haven.
“Over the past two years Ox-Bow has been
working with the city of Saugatuck and the Land Conservancy of
West Michigan to place this piece of property, known as the Tallmadge
Woods, into a conservation easement,” Kalajainen said. “Today
the land continues to be used by Ox-Bow’s students as they
explore and create. It serves as an inspiration to painters,
photographers, sculptors, printmakers, and writers.
“It also will preserve the community’s
scenic view from the Kalamazoo River by preventing the development
of the majority of land in perpetuity.”
Ox-Bow’s secluded arts colony charms continue
to draw diverse professional and amateur artists. Instruction
in painting, glassmaking, sketching, writing, drawing, and metalworking
are available for students of all ages. In the fall, “Art
on the Meadow” workshops invite weekend dips into the arts.
At Friday night open houses during the summer months, the campus
welcomes the public to enjoy art auctions and casual tours.
Dating back to the 1930s, artists leaving Ox-Bow
at summer’s end have a tradition: They pick a spot to bury “memorials” of
lessons learned and inspirations ignited over past weeks. Colorful
capstones — some made of concrete, others colorful glass
and a few wrought iron — earmark these time capsules.
“It goes along with Ox-Bow’s community
discussions about art,” Kalajainen noted. “Together,
the artists work to discover meaningful themes throughout the
summer.”
Interlochen: Art and Nature Enmeshed
North on an isthmus between Green and Duck lakes just south of
Traverse City resides Interlochen Center for the Arts. Towering
white pines and oaks dominate the 1,200-acre campus, once a turn-of-the-century
logging camp. A colony of cabins nestles in its center: Resembling
miniature cottages, some are made of pine, others cobblestone.
All have two small, varnished wood-framed windows and a large door,
and each summer, a piano is wheeled into every one.
Soon, sounds from students raining fingers upon
keys fill the air — just as a breeze from Green Lake rustles
through trees surrounding houses not far from Interlochen’s
Kresge Auditorium, which has hosted musicians including Bob Dylan,
Bonnie Raitt, and Interlochen alum Nora Jones in recent years.
“A lot of people come up to northwest Michigan
for the summer, and a big part of the reason is that on any given
day, year-round, they can catch a concert, performance, reading
or gallery showing at Interlochen,” said Chris Hintz, the
school’s national marketing director. “You don’t
ever have to be bored if you live in our area: We host 600 arts
presentations annually by students, faculty and world-renowned
guest artists.”
Founded in 1928 by University of Michigan
music professor Joseph Maddy as the National Music Camp, Interlochen
has evolved since the 1960s into an international powerhouse
in the performing arts, creative writing and film production.
Globally renowned, the campus now encompasses a 2,500-student
summer arts program for ages 8-18; a 500-student fine arts
boarding high school with college-prep academics; two, 24-hour
listener-supported public radio stations; and eight decades
worth of worldwide alumni, including myriad arts luminaries
(visit www.interlochen.org/alumni).
Interlochen Center for the Arts received a National
Medal of Arts by President George Bush in 2006. The school has
more presidential scholars than any other educational institution
in the United States; Arts Academy alumni also include Jewel,
Felicity Huffman and Mike Wallace.
“In every major arts area you can point to
people from Interlochen who have been influenced by Interlochen,” said
creative writing teacher Mike Delp, who has been at Interlochen
for most of his lengthy teaching career.
Little known by most Michiganders, the school also
offers year-round arts programs for adults. These range from
guitar festival and screenwriting workshops to digital photography,
plein aire painting, and adult chamber camps, among others.
All classes are based on Interlochen’s campus,
further inspiring students with backdrops of two serene lakes
and plenty of Northern Michigan woods.
“I think if you look back at the time, the
camp movement was getting out to nature and getting away from
the city,” Hintz said. “For Joseph Maddy, the arts
and nature were enmeshed. Nature adds something to the art and
vice versa. I think there is something about Northern Michigan.
I think that this camp really could have only happened here.”
Cranbrook Academy of Art: Potent
Art Presence
Those who have never ventured onto Cranbrook’s campus have
no way of fully appreciating what may well be the Motor City’s
best-kept secret: Enchanted gardens do exist, and they’re
right here.
What makes these 319 undulating, meticulously landscaped
acres so captivating — beyond the pristine allure of Lake
Kingswood, waterfalls, fountains and gazing pools — isn’t
just this unexpected abundance of shrubs, blooms, grasses and
woodlands, paved walkways and dirt paths.
It ’s the potent presence of art.
“For more than 75 years, Cranbrook has been
home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and
artists: Ray and Charles Eames, Eliel Saarinen and Jun Kaneko
have all taught here, to name only a few; our students have included
Florence Knoll, Nick Cave, Lorraine Wild and Harry Bertoia,” said
Reed Kroloff, director. “What is important is to understand
how radical a transformation the Cranbrook designers wrought
on both the residential and commercial landscapes of Michigan.
“Tens of thousands, if not more of us, live
in residential environments that were touched directly by Cranbrook
designers.”
Case in point: The entire Cranbrook Educational
Community campus — including the institutions of Cranbrook
Schools and the Cranbrook Institute of Science, along with the
art academy — has been designated a National Historic Landmark
by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Named after the birthplace of newspaper mogul George
Booth’s father, the campus began as a 174-acre farm purchased
by Booth and his wife, Ellen Scripps, in 1904. After building
the family’s estate home, designed by Albert Kahn, the
couple acquired more land and added a Greek theatre and church.
But their real focus was elsewhere.
“As they developed their vision for the possibility
of a new kind of artistic and educational community, they knew
they would need an architect,” Kroloff noted. “It
turned out that one of their sons, Henry, was in architectural
school at the University of Michigan at the time.
“They said ‘would you be interested?’ It
was too complex a commission for him at that stage in his life.
He said they should meet his professor, Eliel Saarinen, who had
accepted a position at the U-M as a distinguished professor.”
So began a partnership that would span more than
two decades. Booth invited Saarinen — who occupies a major
position in the history of modern American design and architecture,
and who was equally inspired by the U.S.’s Arts and Crafts
movement — to move to Cranbrook from Finland to oversee
the campus’s development.
“Contemporary Cranbrook is the fulfillment
of their vision,” Kroloff said.
Within the Art Academy studios are kept small,
with only a handful of students per year invited to study in
each of the 10 disciplines, and they are all interdisciplinary.
Students work with artists-in-residence, each of whom is a working
artist or designer, he said.
“We have studios, a minor, and our liberal-arts
based Critical Studies and Humanities sequence,” Kroloff
said. “That’s it. Students study what they want,
with whom they want — we’re here to make art and
design, not fill classrooms.”
Each year the academy is home to 150 graduate students
working in classes of no more than 15. The program was rated
in the top five of graduate school programs in the United States
by U.S. World and News Report in April 2008.
“That’s a huge pinnacle,” Kroloff
said. “You toss the schools into that and the Institute
of Science, and you’ve got a powerful, cultural force quietly
existing here in Bloomfield Hills.” ≈
To learn more, visit www.interlochen.org; www.cranbrook.edu;
and www.ox-bow.org.
Cyndi Lieske is a Howell-based freelance writer. Lisa M. Jensen
is editor of Michigan BLUE.
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