CSUMB hosts its second expansive Summer Arts extravaganza for students and the public.

Summer school no longer belongs to underachievers who need to shore up their studies or geeks seeking more stimulation. Taking one or two classes in the summer can propel one’s academic journey, but it can also be a fun and fulfilling immersion in one’s passions. That’s what CSU Monterey Bay’s Summer Arts 2013 is aiming for.

July marks the second year CSUMB will host the California State University system’s Summer Arts, which brings talented people from music, theater, film, animation, writing, photography and art onto CSU campuses to teach rigorous two-week workshops. The teachers are experts in their fields, which is valuable for students of the program. But for the rest of us there are rewards as well: Nearly every day in July, many of them will perform or present publicly at CSUMB’s Tanimura & Antle Family Memorial Library, World Theater or the Visual and Public Art Building, costing just $5, $10 or $15 apiece.

July 1, at 7pm, PUSH Physical Theatre starts the deluge, showing off athletic, whimsical dance skills. A DreamWorks animator came last year, and comes again 7pm July 2, followed by a lecture and reading by Oliver Goldstick, whose TV writing includes American Dreams and Ugly Betty.

On July 9, members of Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre Company do dramatic readings in “An Evening of Steinbeck.” (Last week, Hartnell College’s Western Stage wrapped their production of Frank Galati’s Tony-winning 2000 adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, a play Steppenwolf commissioned and world premiered.)

Pushcart Prize and American Book Award-winning poet and former prison inmate Jimmy Santiago Baca comes July 22 to talk about his craft and his life, while Tom Schulman, Academy Award-winning writer of Dead Poets Society (and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) does the same July 11. Musicians are plentiful, with performances on tap by saxophonist Eric Marienthal, guitarists Benjamin Verdery and Andrew York (see story, p. 37), and others. And on July 13, 26 and 27, students showcase what they’ve learned in free culmination presentations and performances.

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Craig Baldwin is a whirling dervish, a fevered film collector and presenter, a legendary figure in the (literally) underground film world. His 25-year-old San Francisco Mission District basement headquarters (and living quarters) of Artist Television Access – and the above-ground Other Cinema microcinema – are Mecca for underground DIY filmmakers.

“We’re more influenced by war resistors, beats, hippies, punks, it’s less academic, less formal, street culture as opposed to bourgeois culture, youth culture, gay culture, labor culture,” he says.

He announces this in a stream-of-consciousness-but-well-aimed torrent of energy and smarts. He says he’s quintessentially Californian, steeped in its surf, nature, skating, and rock-’n’-roll atmosphere; that he’s an obsessive collector of found film footage and paraphernalia, which he stacks in his dungeonesque basement (instead of knocking on the door, one stomps on the sidewalk outside the joint to alert him below). He brushes back his bushel of graying curly hair as if he’s flushing the ideas from his head.

“Fluxus, neo-Dada, punk rock,” he says. “There’s a lot of people who’ve done Dada films, especially now – hahahahaha! – when there’s so much trash!”

On July 23, for his public presentation, he’ll show his most famous documentary film, 1995’s Sonic Outlaws, about the experimental art collage band Negativeland and its fight with U2 over intellectual and creative copyright, and over their satire and culture jamming. It’s brilliant, and maybe even more relevant today as then. (See more of Baldwin’s interview on the Weekly’s Arts & Culture blog.)

This July will be Baldwin’s first appearance at Summer Arts. It will be artist and teacher Beverly Fishman’s second. She teaches at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and was invited by a former student who now coordinates the program’s contemporary painting component. She doesn’t remember everything about her first, but does recall that from the moment she stepped off the plane, she worked with the students day and night, often eating meals with them, pushing their work further.

In her public presentation on July 17, she’ll talk about her 25 years making art.

“Science and the body and how technology images us,” she says. “I’m interested in disease as well as the cure. Pharmaceuticals, pills. What it was like for me to become an artist. How did I make it through these times?”

In a blog interview, one of her students praised the way she told them about the reality of being an artist – the sacrifices, paying the bills.

That might be because she’s paying it forward; “I’ve had people all along the way who’ve been my mentors,” she says. The same could likely be said of all the creative people coming to town this month. Summer Arts is an opportunity for them to turn the tables and mentor others, to show and teach what they’ve learned along their journey. Lucky us.

SUMMER ARTS runs nearly every day in July at CSUMB, 6th Street, Seaside. $5-$15/presentation; free/student culminations. 262-2714, www.csusummerarts.org, csusummerartsboxoffice@gmail.com