`It has to be different'
Students produce Quartz Mountain art from home
Every morning during the week ,270 teenagers across Oklahoma tuned their instruments, rea died their paint brushes, warmed up their vocal chords and logged into Zoom.
The Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute returned as “OSAI at Home” this year in place of i ts traditional programs at Quartz Mountain in the southwest corner of the state.
The competitive arts program moved entirely online from Sunday to Friday during COVID- 19.
OS AI, whose location at Quartz Mountain has become synonymous with its name, is normally an intensive two-week program for high school students in acting, chorus, creative writing, dance, drawing and painting, film and video, orchestra and photography.
Alyssa Underwood, 17, of Yukon, said she loved the drawing and painting program at Quartz Mountain last year, but she felt pessimistic when she heard this year it would be online.
Learning from home was difficult over the last few months of the school year, said Underwood, a junior at Classen School of Advanced Studies High School at Northeast.
“It's harder for me to motivate myself to do things, but I think that Quartz Mountain has really done a lotto get me motivated and to get inspired to do art ,” she said. “I don't think there's really anything I'm missing out on as far as doing art, having people look at my art to critique it and getting advice from my teacher.”
Some programs are impossible to recreate over video calls.
Jaylin Vinson, of Midwest City, said it would be“catastrophic” for an entire orchestra to play at the same time on Zoom.
Vinson, 17, instead listens to lectures from orchestra instructor Allen Tinkham in the morning and breaks into a small group of violinists in the afternoon. The group practices with their video feeds on mute.
“We' ve just been talki ng about being a musician outside of our instrument ,” Vinson said .“How can we build ourselves as people and humans and musicians that doesn't deal with the techniques of our instrument ?”
Several students, from a variety of electives, said the online program explored their craft to a greater depth than classes at the regular camp. Rather than preparing for weekly performances, students said they gained a deeper understanding of their discipline.
More than 1,000 a pp licants from across the state auditioned for the program, and 270 were selected. OSAI commonly draws 350 student sand staff to Quartz Mountain, and thousands of spectators come to see student performances.
Mia Bog gs ,17, pushed furniture out of the way to do ballet and contemporary dance in the living room of her Norman home.
She said it took more self-discipline to correct mistakes and improve her dancing without an instructor in the room.
The acting program carried on as if Zoom were its new stage. Becca Worthington, 18, of Clare more, said she still prepared characters, l earned new techniques and socialized with other students, despite the change in medium.
C OVID -19 cut Worthington' s senior year short and postponed her graduation ceremony at Verdigris High School.
“Whenever I got in( to OSAI), I told my mom, ` I'm OK with school being canceled. I'm OK with graduation being canceled. I'm OK with anything else, but if Quartz gets canceled, it'll break my heart,'” she said.
The virtual format allowed OSAI to draw more celebrity guest speakers. Tony Award winner Kelli O'Hara, principal ballet dancer Misty Cope land, photographer Keith Carter and radio host J ad Abumrad called in for presentations and Q&A's.
However, some students said video calls and online classes didn't convey as much “Quartz Mountain magic” as usual.
Chorus student Tate Radcliffe, 18, said it's not the same as living with 269 of the best high school artists in the state. But, as the final events of his senior year at Chandler High School were canceled, Radcliffe was grateful OSAI didn't pull the plug.
“I was going to give it a shot because Quartz was completely life-changing for me last year ,” Radcliffe said. “I feel like they've done a great job in acknowledging that it has to be different, and they' ve almost leaned into that a bit.”