OHHS AP Art and Design Students and Visiting Artist Rachel Linneman

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Artist Rachel Linneman recently visited the AP Art and Design students for an interactive workshop as a part of this year’s Contemporary Arts Center School Outreach Program. The CAC SOP offers students from grades 2 through 12 a comprehensive, immersive experience with contemporary art. Running from September through May, this year-long program includes an in-school orientation, two guided tours of CAC exhibitions, a classroom project tied to the exhibition led by a local artist, and a spring visit to an artist’s studio. Program docents work with the same class throughout the year, fostering continuity and rapport with the students. Many docents have developed long-standing relationships with the schools and teachers they support, providing consistent guidance and engagement year after year.

Rachel Linnemann is an Appalachian artist teaching at the University of Cincinnati where she received her Master’s in Fine Art in 2021. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University in 2012 with a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art and a minor in Psychology. Linnemann was chosen for the Revealed early career artist series for the Sculpture Center and will have a 2024 solo show. She has worked as a professional Artist, Educator, and Preparator for various organizations such as the Cincinnati Art Museum (OH), Bucknell University (PA), Artworks Cincinnati (OH), and Applied Imagination (KY). Linnemann recently completed a residency with the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio where she exhibited for the show Emerge. Her work has been shown in Ohio, Michigan, Greece, Louisiana, Indiana, Maryland, and Kentucky. She works across media to develop a language surrounding mental health, growth, resilience, and joy.

Linnemann is a found objects artist, utilizing recognizable objects of labor and femininity to celebrate her Appalachian ancestors. Reflecting on her upbringing, she is examining generational trauma and generational knowledge and its connection to labor. She often heard stories of hardship partnered with stories of gratitude and strength. There was an understanding of the darkness of the world balanced with the gratitude for the present moment and an emphasis on knowledge being protection from the past. Like a butterfly perched on barbed wire, one a symbol of freedom and something delicate, another a symbol of strength and oppression, Linnemann’s memories are a balance of opposition.

During the workshop, students explored concept of identity through individual collages and selected, and archived, found objects of personal significance in the creation of a collaborative ‘community pie’ piece. The idea of constructing multiple views of the self, and components that make up community, created connection to the Barbara Probst exhibition at the CAC, ‘Subjective Evidence’, that focused on multiple vantage points capturing a single scene and moment in time. Throughout the year, students will create artworks inspired by their experiences with the CAC SOP and will participate in an exhibition in the Spring of 2025.

The 2024-2025 Memory Project: Creating Portraits of Kindness for Children in India

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“The Memory Project” is a nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create portraits for youth around the world who have faced substantial challenges, such as neglect, abuse, loss of parents, and extreme poverty. Over the past nine years, Drawing and Printmaking and NAHS students have created over 470 portraits for children in Madagascar, the Philippines, and Syrian refugees in Jordan, Puerto Rico, the Rohingya in Rakhine, Columbia, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone. This year, students at OHHS created portraits for 30 Indian children.

Children in India face a complex set of challenges that affect their education, health, safety, and development. While school attendance has improved, many children, especially in rural areas, still lack access to quality education due to poverty, long travel distances, and inadequate resources. Economic pressures contribute to high dropout rates and force many children into labor, where laws against child labor are inconsistently enforced. Health and nutrition are also major concerns, with many children suffering from malnutrition and limited healthcare access, especially in rural areas. Mental health needs are often overlooked due to a lack of resources. Gender discrimination affects girls in particular, as cultural expectations often push them out of school early and into child marriages. Many children are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse remaining prevalent. Climate change also poses challenges, as frequent natural disasters disrupt schooling, displace families, and impact health, while water scarcity affects hygiene and daily life. The digital divide became especially apparent during the pandemic, as many students lacked access to online learning resources.

“The Memory Project” portraits are created by students enrolled in the Drawing and Printmaking course (grades 9-12). The students began by analyzing the artwork of Kehinde Wiley and used the information provided about the children’s favorite things, colors, and hopes for the future to design the background of the image. Once the portraits are delivered to the children, we will receive a video of their reactions to the artwork. Below are some of the highlights of the OHHS Drawing and Printmaking students’ resulting portraits.

OHHS NAHS Welcomes OLEA for “Contemplations on Democracy”

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The OHHS National Art Honor Society welcomed OLEA for a special performance as a part of the Creative Canvassing program. OLEA, the current SOS ART Artist in Residence in partnership with the Fitton Center for Creative Arts, used chamber music to explore themes, through a non-partisan lens, related to the 2024 election.

The members of OLEA met in the Spring of 2021 through their participation in the Cincinnati New Music Ensemble (CNME). Inspired by the artistry, musicianship, and spirit of collaboration they saw in one another as well as their shared interest in new music, they founded OLEA shortly after. OLEA aims to create music that is engaging and impactful for audiences. With their unique instrumentation of violin, clarinet, cello, and piano, they have played in various duo, trio, and quartet configurations, exploring some of the most compelling chamber music repertoire. Since its inception, the importance of new music and creative collaboration has remained at the center of OLEA’s artistic vision. Future projects include regional tours through the United States, competing in international competitions, and commissioning new works by living composers.

Students had the opportunity to engage with issues that excited or concerned them while learning about the democratic and electoral processes that shape our modern political landscape. Students voted on topics they wanted to comment on and explore more deeply including climate change, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, violence, healthcare, income inequality, and disinformation.

Students were able to gain insight into the ways that democracy works in our everyday lives through musical and extra-musical demonstrations. The interactive performance was accompanied by the reading of poetry and the projection of visual art by greater Cincinnati Artists, addressing the same themes.

Exploring ‘The Beauty Within’ and ‘Sacred Spaces’ with the Taft ARC Program

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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, 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 at the Annex Gallery 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. In 2022, Cox created work in the Metro Dayton Library west branch; and this past summer, he executed four new murals for the community of Avondale that stand as monuments to the healing spirit of joy and community pride.

The Drawing and Printmaking students recently visited the Taft Museum of Art where they engaged in docent-led tours of the galleries and worked alongside Cedric in the studio. Students synthesized Cedric’s approach in generating the composition for the collaborative piece the classes are painting together and created individual designs based upon the abstraction of their initials. This was the first time that most of the students had ever visited the community treasure that is the Taft Museum of Art!

Exploring ‘Subjective Evidence’ and Multiple Perspectives

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On October 18th, AP Art and Design students embarked on their first field experience as a part of this year’s Contemporary Arts Center School Outreach Program. The CAC SOP offers students from grades 2 through 12 a comprehensive, immersive experience with contemporary art. Running from September through May, this year-long program includes an in-school orientation, two guided tours of CAC exhibitions, a classroom project tied to the exhibition led by a local artist, and a spring visit to an artist’s studio. Program docents work with the same class throughout the year, fostering continuity and rapport with the students. Many docents have developed long-standing relationships with the schools and teachers they support, providing consistent guidance and engagement year after year.

During the tour, students engaged with the Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence exhibition. A German photographer who divides her time between Munich and New York, Barbara began capturing single scenes through multiple images taken simultaneously with a radio-controlled camera system in 2000. This innovative technique reveals complex, playful, and darkly cinematic visions of people in time and space. Probst’s work spans various photographic genres, including landscape, still life, fashion, portraiture, and street photography. Her multi-perspective approach creates quasi-three-dimensional views that raise philosophical questions about optical authority: what defines visual truth when multiple perspectives coexist? Does adding more visual data lead to a greater sense of realism—or diminish it?

In the gallery, students explored the idea of multiple vantage points capturing a single scene and moment in time. Throughout the year, students will create artworks inspired by their experiences with the CAC SOP and will participate in an exhibition in the Spring of 2025.