Oklahoma City, Okla. — Eight of the state’s most artistically advanced students from six schools in southwest Oklahoma attended the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain (OSAI) in June. OSAI is an intensive two-week residential school that provides professional training to Oklahoma high school students in the visual, literary, and performing arts. Among these was creative writing student Eliza Willodson from Fort Sill.
Willodson has been a writer for nearly her entire life, writing and illustrating stories as early as three years old. “[Writing has] always been a huge thing for me,” she said. “It’s become a part of who I am.”
Each student spent six class hours a day studying with nationally renowned artist-educators. Dave Lucas, lecturer at Case Western Reserve University and the second Poet Laureate of the State of Ohio, served as the creative writing instructor for Willodson and others, focusing primarily on poetry. Other notable faculty members included Deborah Dickson, three-time Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, and Jung-Ho Pak, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Cape Symphony in Massachusetts and the Bay Philharmonic.
“The poet Kenneth Koch has this line that he used to tell his students: ‘Have some friends who are so good it scares you,’” said Lucas. “Not only do I think that’s good advice, but I also think that if our students didn’t already have some friends who are so good it scares them, they certainly will now.”
In addition to studying their chosen discipline, students at OSAI have the opportunity to discover and explore new artistic mediums and to collaborate with students in other disciplines. This summer, the creative writing class worked with the photography students to craft photographs and poems around their impulses, using visual imagery as inspiration to create imagery through words and vice versa.
“My favorite thing I’ve learned has been paying more attention to how words can put you in a place or conjure a certain image in your head,” said Willodson. “It’s really been helpful to me studying how different poets use words to conjure images and capture the essences of things—like eating an apple pie. You can picture eating an apple pie, but to be able to describe it without just saying that is fascinating.”
With wildflowers in full bloom and deer grazing outside classroom pavilions, there was no shortage of inspiration at Quartz Mountain State Park & Lodge. OAI’s unique partnership with the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department allows artists to retreat to southwestern Oklahoma every summer and fall.
“I love nature so much, and it’s fun to be so close to it all the time. You wake up and there’s deer outside the window and there’s hawks circling overhead. You can go on the mountains and see all these fun plants that you never would have seen otherwise.”
The cost of attendance for each student is valued at approximately $4,200. However, the Oklahoma Arts Institute seeks funding to ensure that all students attend tuition-free. This allowed over 240 students across the state to travel to Quartz Mountain for the experience of a lifetime. Applications for the 2024 Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute will open in December at www.oaiquartz.org.
Scholarships for southwest Oklahoma students attending OSAI were made possible through funding from the Oklahoma State Department of Education, as well as the Darryl Rodriquez Scholarship Fund, McCasland Foundation Scholars Fund, Community Foundation of Ardmore, Gwen Taft Memorial Scholarship Fund, PEEPS for Oklahoma Public School Orchestras Fund, Helon Whiteside La-Gree Scholarship Fund, Jarrod Fergeson Scholarship Fund, Richard W. Moore Memorial Scholars Fund, Dr. and Mrs. Gilbert Gibson Scholarship Fund, and Jack and Judy Bryan Scholarship Fund. Additional program support is provided by the Oklahoma Arts Council, Harris Foundation, OKC Midtown Rotary Club, Inasmuch Foundation, Jerome Westheimer Family Foundation, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, and the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation. This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
