Transform Your Life This Summer: OSAI 2024
The Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute (OSAI) at Quartz Mountain, commonly referred to as “Quartz” by students, returned to its original location at Quartz Mountain State Park after a two year hiatus due to COVID-19 and construction at the park. Quartz is a two-week intensive summer camp for the fine arts. Auditions are open to all high school students in Oklahoma, and auditions are held for a eight disciplines: acting, chorus, creative writing, dance, drawing and painting, film and video, orchestra, and photography.
Last summer, six Casady students were accepted. A couple of students agreed to discuss their time at the camp.
Meera Abuelshar (‘24) who joined Quartz for drawing and painting, recalled her experience, smiling: “It was awesome! I made some really good friends 𑁋 a lot of my closest art friends are from Quartz and you are immersed in art and you are constantly doing art. So your creativity is just going crazy because you’re experiencing all these different art forms and you’re friends with people who are very passionate about art. All you’re talking about is art and all you’re thinking about is art and it’s very inspiring in general.”
In an attempt to shift away from just the artistic aspect of Quartz, Meera recounted the activities she did in her freetime. Acknowledging that it was different depending on the discipline, she says “with drawing and painting we had to finish a certain thing by a certain time so we would spend a lot of our free time still in the studio, working on our printmaking.” Continuing on, she spoke about what she did when she did have free time: “In the past, we’ve just kind of hung out as friends like you would do here at school in the halls. Just hanging out in the halls with your friends, chatting. It was really fun!”
As she’s gone both her freshman year as well as her sophomore year, Meera has experienced Quartz both during COVID and after. Describing the difference, she explains: “It [Quartz] was held on a different campus. It was on USAO and I really liked it because you were on a college campus, you only had one roommate. In general, the day to day was pretty similar, just a little less outdoors-y. It was nice to have only one roommate […] the girls [at the original location] basically got one hotel room to share between three other people.”
When asked what she would say to anyone thinking about auditioning, Meera responded without hesitation: “There is no downside to auditioning. The only thing that might happen is your ego is hurt a little bit, but the audition process in general […] it’s a good thing to practice and get used to, especially if you wanna do art in the future. With drawing and painting it’s nice to just put together a portfolio and see what people say about the portfolio. But, there’s no downside to auditioning, so you might as well. It’s an amazing experience, so audition and get in, it’s awesome!”
Adding in a few final comments, Meera talks about the teachers, saying that they are some of the best teachers in their fields. “You should only try if you like whatever art form you’re doing, because you are going to be doing only that art form for two weeks straight, six plus hours a day. So if you don't like writing, and you get in for writing, you’re gonna be miserable because you’ll just be writing for two weeks for six hours a day. But, I mean if you like whatever art form you’re doing, you should do it.”
Another Casady student who made it into Quartz this past year, Nishant Shrivastava (‘24) enthusiastically recalls his time there for orchestra: “It was a lot of fun! The first couple of days, I didn’t really know too many people so it was very interesting meeting everyone because the schedule was very fast paced. We didn’t really have a lot of downtime so we were kinda forced to talk to each other, especially near the end of the day when everyone would go back to their cabins. I’m not sure about other disciplines, but I can safely assume that they were just as busy there, because, I mean, you don't go to this camp to leisurely practice stuff.”
Describing the set up of the cabin, Nishant explains that there were eight bunk beds in his cabin, with one of the beds reserved for the counselor. There were four rooms each with the eight bunk beds in them, connected by a kitchen and a common area in the back. Remembering his counselor, Nishant smiles fondly, saying: “Our counselor, Mike, was very tolerable of all of the shenanigans we put him through because we got bored very frequently and did a lot of things that would otherwise annoy other counselors very easily. He was very very chill about everything and very fun. He was basically another camper.” Remembering something, Nishant quickly threw in, “Also, he does choir. Go follow him on Instagram: Mike Hanisch.” Continuing on, he said: “Even though our cabins were kinda small, I kinda enjoyed that fact because we had like eight bunk beds in one room and we had barely any breathing room in there, so we had to rely on each other for fun because we weren’t really allowed to have our phones there.”
Recounting the things they did at Quartz for free time, Nishant smiles, saying, “Everyone in the cabin went to the back of it [the common area] and we all had a pull up contest. And even though Eddy [Kang (‘24)] was technically part of Mountain View A, he was basically an honorary Mountain View B member, and everyone agreed with that in Mountain View B.” Another thing they did for fun started on the way back from the Led Zeppelin concert that the orchestra played at Scissortail Park. “It was way late at night, and there were these two current seniors, [...] playing Like A Dino and they were like just a seat ahead of us, so Luis [one of the Mountain View B members] out of nowhere turns on his phone and starts playing the game on the exact same song. I don't know why he had it downloaded, and then I started downloading it on my phone. Next thing you know, we were all playing the same song trying to beat each other. Throughout that entire next week we all grew an addiction to that game, just that one song, and trying to beat each other.”
When asked about the orchestra part of Quartz, Nishant smiled fondly. “The first week we were there, we learned music from Led Zeppelin that was turned into an orchestral version. Then the second week, we spent our time learning a suite called 'The Planets' by Gustav Holst and we spent two weeks at Quartz Mountain, one for each of the suites and then we performed them at the end of each week. We were conducted by Liza Grossman from Ohio.” Talking more about how Quartz made him grow as a musician, Nishant said: “There were private instructors there at Quartz for every instrument, some instruments had more than one, but low brass only needed one instructor because there were only three trombones there. He was extremely skilled, I mean I was able to increase my tone quality and range exponentially within just two weeks of lessons with him. I also learned a lot about how to play with a full orchestra because that was my first time playing with a full orchestra. I learned a lot of where to fit in with a full orchestra because it’s very 𑁋 it’s not necessarily difficult to stand out, but it also isn’t necessarily difficult to blend in.”
After sitting down with both Meera and Nishant, it’s clear that Quartz is not only a great experience, but is a way for students to increase their art skills. Details about auditioning are available on the OSAI website for anyone interested. Both students agreed that the audition process was a lot of work but worth it in the end, so anyone who auditions, be prepared. Creating life-lasting bonds, helping students go on to win Grammy awards, and even landing a high school student a spot in an indie rock tour, it’s clear that Quartz is worth all the work put into getting in.