The Taft Museum of Art’s Artists Reaching Classrooms program (ARC) immerses high school art students in Cincinnati’s visual arts community, artistic practices, exhibitions, and marketing strategies while exposing them to careers in the arts. This year, Ms. Schorsch’s Drawing and Printmaking students are participating in this amazing program which consists of 1 museum visit and 4 classroom visits during the 1st semester, culminating in an exhibition of collaboratively created artworks at the Taft Art Museum in the winter. This year, students will be working alongside Cedric Michael Cox to experience the practices of a professional artist firsthand. Cedric will also lead students in the creation of a collaborative artwork, and an individual piece, for the Annex Gallery exhibition.

Cedric Michael Cox is best known for his paintings and drawings that merge surrealism and representational abstraction. As a student at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), Cox was awarded a fellowship to study at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1999, he began to exhibit regionally and nationally. In addition to his work being in corporate collections, Cox has executed several large murals in various public and private schools in The Cincinnati Region. Cox’s past exhibitions include The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, The Weston Art Gallery, The Columbus Art Museum, the Dayton Art Institute, Five Myles Gallery in Brooklyn, the Museum of Science and Industry and Gallery Guichard in Chicago, and The Taft Museum of Art.

In 2019, Cox’s work was exhibited at the 21c Museum Hotel in Cincinnati; in 2020, he had a solo exhibition at James Ratliff Gallery in Sedona, Arizona. A 20-year retrospective exhibition was created for Caza Sikes Gallery, along with a commissioned body of work for the Kinley Hotel Cincinnati in 2020. In 2021, a series of 64 paintings were installed for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and in 2022 created work in the Metro Dayton Library west branch. Recently, he executed four new murals for the community of Avondale that stand as monuments to the healing spirit of joy and community pride as well as several murals featured in local schools.

The Drawing and Printmaking students spend their first visit getting to know Cedric and brainstorming ways that they could communicate their collective interpretations of ‘Amplifying Student Voices’. Following the idea brainstorming sessions, through which they established a theme focused on music and culture, they generated sketches to be shared with Cedric which he will use to synthesize their different perspectives into a collective, cohesive, design.

Over the next few weeks, the Drawing and Printmaking students will continue their collaboration with Cedric in preparation for the winter exhibition of their work at the Taft Museum of Art.