The Oxbow School

Mission — Think, create, and grow.

The Oxbow School is a semester program in Napa, California focusing on studio art-making and interdisciplinary humanities. Oxbow provides sophomores, juniors, seniors, and gap-year students the opportunity for an intensive art experience and thought-provoking academic instruction.

The atmosphere at Oxbow is one of artistic and social exploration combined with rigorous academics designed to prepare students for college and beyond. Oxbow alumni often go on to earn distinguished art and writing awards, and earn offers of admission and win scholarships at top colleges and universities.

We invite students to enlarge their artistic vision and enhance their technical skills in an environment dedicated to supporting artistic inquiry. Take this opportunity to further your education, expand your social horizons, explore your passion for art, and create a new foundation for your future!

In addition to the 4-month semester programs in the Fall and Spring, Oxbow also offers an engaging 6-week Summer Art Institute for rising 10th - 12th grade and gap year students.

OXBOW SUMMER ART INSTITUTE

Modeled after the semester program, students who participate in the Oxbow Summer Art Institute will have the opportunity to have the social, intellectual, and art experience that Oxbow is so well known for! The immersive visual arts residency program invites young artists to engage a creative course of studio practice rooted in deep intellectual inquiry. In partnership with working artists, students will create work towards an art portfolio and conclude the program with a capstone final project. Participating artists have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make art in our well-equipped studios among like-minded peers overlooking the Napa River. Students work in a variety of media spanning: drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and animation. In addition to extensive art-making, students have opportunities to explore the sublime landscape that defines Northern California. They also have access to contemporary work on exhibition at local museums and galleries around the Bay Area.

This 6-week summer-term is open to rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors as well as those taking a gap year after high school. Students will receive an entire year’s worth of studio art credit with an official high school transcript from Oxbow. This unique residency program is grounded in the philosophy that there is no limit to what adolescents can create when provided an open-minded environment with high-level instruction, personal and collective accountability, and support. They return home having developed their art practice and sense of self.

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