Swarm Season

A bucket full of bees!

Last week, while the kiddos were away on spring break, exciting things were happening in the Oxbow neighborhood. In sync with the arrival of spring, honeybees started swarming! We were very fortunate to notice a swarm resting in a tree near campus, and were even more fortunate to capture the swarm and set it up in a new hive. Here we'll tell you the story of how it happened, and what it means when bees swarm.

Honeybees swarm when they have outgrown their hive and are ready to set up a new colony. Swarming generally happens in the spring when the weather warms up and the bees jolt into action. A hive prepares itself for swarming by raising a virgin queen, who will take over the hive while the old queen leaves to start the new one. When she's ready, the old queen takes flight, and, loyal to her pheromones, thousands of worker bees follow her. As they leave the hive together they form a fluid cloud searching for a place to land. Collectively, they amass somewhere safe and wait as scout bees make flights out and about in search of a suitable new home. This scouting search can take anywhere from hours to days, and while the bulk of the bees are waiting, they form an amorphous mass that can take on wild and beautiful shapes. This is what our swarm looked like, hanging from a tree on Third Street. 

If you can manage to capture a swarm, it's a great way to start a new hive. But catching a swarm can be a bit tricky, especially if it's waaaaay up in a tree like this one was. First we had to collect some tools and supplies. Among them were five-gallon buckets, into which we put some pieces of wax comb. The comb is there to attract the bees--its feel and smell say "HOME!" to honeybees. 

Oh, we should mention that at this point we had also called our beekeeper buddies over at Napa Valley Bee Co. They are swarm-catching experts and knew just what to do. With the comb-baited bucket in hand, beekeeper Jason climbed a (very tall) ladder. He gently snuck the bucket under the mass of bees, and very slowly and patiently guided the swarm off the tree branch and into the bucket. This process took upwards of THREE HOURS. Let's just say that Jason is a Zen Bee Master. It was an amazing process to watch, and in the end, there were actually so many bees that we had to use a second bucket. This was an unusually large swarm!

After the swarm was secured into our two buckets, we whisked them over to our bee buddy's apiary where there was an empty hive box waiting for occupants. Setting up the bees in their new home was quite simple--we just gently dumped the bucket onto the hive frames! Recognizing that they were home, the bees quickly crawled down into the frames and started settling in. Very soon after arrival, the queen will have started laying eggs to populate the new colony.

Here are our girls in their new home! While they get established, we'll be preparing a new spot for the hive to live on campus. And we've planted a huge row of flowers over in the Back 40 to make sure they have plenty of forage this summer. Just a couple days ago we saw another swarm heading down Third Street, but it landed too far out of reach...it's busy bee season over here in Napa!

Ox-Bowling

Before leaving for Spring Break, OS30 went bowling together as one last community activity to kick off some much needed and deserved R&R. While some of us barely broke 45 points, others unleashed some freak bowling skills - achieving whopping scores well over 100! Of course it isn't all about winning but...we may just have to return to improve our skills and have a showdown. 

Very special thanks to Napa Bowl for hosting us! 

Eliot, Zen, Elijah, Daniel, Brem

Rose, Roger, Phoebe, Patricia, Riley, Megan, Maeve

Zoe, Maddie, Mia, Dejah, Amanda, Chiara and Libby and Isabella

Iggy, Anela, Sarah, Kafé

Visiting Artist: Nathalie Miebach

This week, OS30 finished their second visiting artist residency with the Boston-based sculptor Nathalie Miebach. Nathalie's work is dynamic, complex, and science-driven, most often focusing on weather systems as a starting point for an intensive research and process-based art practice. Check out Nathalie's amazing work on her personal website here, and watch her discuss her work in a TEDTalk here. 

Nathalie's residency at Oxbow began with the following assignment:

"This workshop will ask students to build a sculptural, visual story about an experience they have had with weather. We will approach this from the perspective of a storyteller. A story consists of different parts (the setting, the characters, the flow or tempo of the narrative, the texture of the relationships, etc.), which will all turn into different sculptural components. For some students, the story will be a conceptual guide throughout the week, for others it will only serve as a starting point to begin the sculpture with."

Throughout their week with Nathalie, students were introduced to several new sculptural techniques, including various types of traditional basket weaving. Below are some examples of the exciting and varied work that resulted--note that none of the students had ever worked with these techniques before!

Amanda's sculpture

Riley's sculpture

Isabella's sculpture

Dejah's sculpture

ALTER EGO

This week we'd like to introduce you to all the students of OS30. Each dorm suite was tasked with creating a unique group portrait, and it appears that some alter egos came out of hiding for this special occasion... Enjoy!

WESTA: Chloe, Leanne, Maya, Hannah, Olivia, Perry, Kafe

WEST B: Michael, Trace, Will, Roger, Brem, Elijah

WEST C: Zoe, Mittie, Rose, Phoebe, Katie, Chiara, Maddie

WEST D: Isabella, Sarah, Katie, Lydia, Annabelle, Maiele, MeiMei

EAST A: Daniel, Gabe, Zen, Eliot, Iggy

EAST C: Amanda, Jaxon, Valentina, Olivia, Riley, Libby, Mia

EAST D: Madie, Lena, Hannah, Dejah, Maeve, Anela, Julia

Top Secret Peek into Project X

The past few weeks, OS30 has been busy with Project X - the first longterm and self directed project in the Oxbow semester. "Project X"is, in fact, a codename for a project holding a very special place in Oxbow's mythology that is unquestionably the turning point of each semester. We can't tell you many details (you'll just have to attend for the full scoop!), but the basic idea is that students are given a very basic prompt that is meant to jumpstart a unique mode of inquiry. At this point, students determine the content of their pieces, their media, and are responsible for developing robust research and work ethics to advance their art.

There's been a break out of diverse projects including aspects such as paraffin wax preserved plants, plaster and latex casts and molds, painted clay on canvas, a documentary or two, and even a sculpture repurposing a Project X from OS29.

We've combed the studios to get great shots for you! We hope you enjoy this sneak peek into one of Oxbow's most definitive (and secretive!) projects.

Anela

Gabe

Isabella

Libby

Maeve

Phoebe at work

 installation shot from inside Phoebe's piece

Zoe

and a gratuitous shot of a gorgeous Spring corner on campus:

SPRING AHEAD: An Outdoor Report

It's Spring again on the Oxbow campus, so we thought this week we'd give you a taste of what's been happening outside the studio walls...

A couple weeks ago, 15 strapping young Oxbow students shoveled ten yards of compost onto the school's biggest garden. In case you're new to the world of compost, that's about 10,000 pounds of dirt--no small feat. The plot, sometimes affectionately referred to as "The Annex," "The Colony," or "The Back 40," is a piece of land owned by our neighbor a little bit down Third Street. We've been very lucky to be able to use this land, as it's more than doubled our campus growing space. Our neighbor's mother grew up there, and tells vivid stories of how her mother (an  Italian immigrant) cultivated enough food on the plot to feed their family of 10. When we first started gardening there, the family gave us a small bag of magic beans--magic because they are a true heirloom, grown and saved from beans our neighbor's grandmother carried with her from Italy (in the 1920's? 1930's?). We've been having some trouble getting the garden up and running over the last couple years, mostly because the soil needs a lot of work. So we've been chipping away, one row at a time, applying compost and amendments in too-small doses and seeing too-small yields. Gone are those days! We are about to see this garden take off...





Our giant load of organic compost was generously donated by the Napa Recycling and Waste Services, who make compost from Napa household food waste, and it's going to make things so much better for our garden. Next week we'll turn the compost in, shape the rows, and start seedlings in the greenhouse. With a space this big producing food at it's full potential, we'll be able to make a significantly larger contribution to the Oxbow dining program. And of course we plan to plant a whole row of the magic family heirloom beans. 

The rest of the Oxbow gardens are already in full Spring swing, with veggies planted by OS29 ready for harvest. Check out this prize-winning cauliflower:

In other exciting outdoor news, our new batch of Ox-Chix have started laying. With the days getting longer and our girls pigging out on kitchen scraps and bugs, we'll soon be getting about two dozen eggs a day. Our flock is quite stylish, with six different breeds laying eggs in a lovely range of colors: greens, blues, rusty browns, even ecru. We had to build an addition to the "coop condo" to accommodate the busy layers!

Oxbow students rotate through Ox-Chix duty on a weekly basis, and are responsible for making sure that the chix have food and water. The kids on chix duty also bring the hens special scraps from the kitchen, and collect the eggs, which go directly to the dining hall and are served for breakfast the very next day. Aren't these just the prettiest eggs you've ever seen?







And finally, last Friday we took a Spring walkabout on the Marin coast. It was a spectacularly warm, clear day, and a great time was had by all. What a treat to spend the day off campus, outdoors, TOGETHER. Happy Spring!

IN THE LANDSCAPE WITH THE LANDSCAPE

Reed talks to the class

This week marked the end of OS30's first Visiting Artist Residency with Reed Anderson. Our post today is a collaboration, written by Amanda and Lena:

AMANDA: Through this ten-day visiting artist residency, our class of 46 students got to know Reed Anderson: a spunky, table-dancing, multi-media artist from New York who’s main work is a combination of printmaking and stenciling (check out Reed's work here). We started out our first class by working with how handshakes and human interaction plays into art and visual movement. We created a collaborative “class handshake” involving everyone, that we were then required to perform each and every class as a group. This also tied into a movement exercise that took place outside in groups of two, where we paired up to practice how movement is fluid and creates different sensory experiences:

Mia and Maeve try out a movement exercise

Lena works on her stencil

AMANDA: The next class involved creating a piece that “created itself,” using paper as a tool to make an art piece through folding, cutting, and spray painting.


LENA: “I am not teaching art, I’m teaching life.” Reed Anderson told me this while I was ready to throw out a piece of art I had been working on because of a deep internal hatred I had obtained for it. He made me continue with the piece as though I hated it and wanted to hate it even more. In the end I liked the piece and learned that, like life, I can’t just stop doing it because I don’t like it right now.

Gabe presents his work

Chloe's finished piece

Iggy, Brem, and Trace admire their collaborative work

AMANDA: We continued in the next assignment by creating a still life within our environment utilizing found materials, which we then drew from one perspective and took a photograph from another. Our final art assignment was to document a habitual movement that we do in our everyday lives. For our last class session we collaborated on a sculpture, drawing, and painting project which involved the classroom furniture, butcher paper, and a garage door to ultimately display it. Anderson's unique teaching style never failed to engage and incite curiosity for assignments. 

LENA: Through this intensive 10-day residency I learned a lot about the process of creating art from itself and from materials surrounding us in the world we are forced to survive in. Anderson gave us a range of experiences in class, from exercises that inspire to making handshakes for no apparent artistic reason; everything we did had an overall purpose. Each piece of each class with Anderson came together to leave a mark on my ever-growing young mind that I will not forget in my future of art, Oxbow and the world beyond.

Sculptures for Poets

For the Narrative unit in Sculpture, students consider the power of memorials when they are assigned a poet for whom they design and construct a monument. Some are familiar names while others are more obscure. Regardless, it's pretty clear that each student forms an exciting relationship with them and their work. Below are some beautiful sculptures and their thoughtful descriptions: 

Eliot, Berkeley CA: Philip Nikolayev. Eliot was drawn to Nikolayev's futuristic language and resonated with his subject matter. With this monument, Eliot wanted to illustrate the philosophical thinking of Nikolayev through a blend of tradition and experimental techniques that echo the poet's work. 

Lydia, Freeport Maine: Sylvia Plath. Focusing on Sylvia Plath, Lydia created an interactive sculpture on a roll of paper towels to reference Plath's consideration of herself as disposable. Be sure to watch the video for the full effect!

Mai, Napa CA: Wendy Videlock: For her Wendy Videlock monument, Mai integrated Videlock's numerous roles in life (artist, mother, wife) into one sculpture to showcase the different aspects and expressions informing Videlock's work.