The Taft Museum of Art’s Artists Reaching Classrooms (ARC) program immerses high school art students in Cincinnati’s visual arts community, connecting them with artistic practices, exhibitions, marketing strategies, and careers in the arts. This semester, Drawing and Printmaking students are participating in the program, which includes one museum visit, four classroom visits, and culminates in a winter exhibition at the Taft.
As a part of ARC, students are collaborating with artist Cedric Michael Cox. Cedric 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. Throughout the ARC program, Cedric will guide students in creating a large-scale collaborative artwork for the Taft exhibition.
During their recent museum visit, students toured the galleries with Taft docents and worked with Kareem A. Simpson, Duncanson Program Manager at the Taft. In the studio, they explored approaches to writing for this year’s inaugural writing competition. This year, all participating students are encouraged to write a 300 to 500 word essay about their experience in the ARC program and how it has influenced their artistic practice. They are encouraged to focus on the ways their artist inspired them, how their personal practice has evolved over the course of the program, the specific things they learned or experienced during the program, or any other aspect that is meaningful to them.
For many, it was their first time experiencing the Taft Museum of Art, a true community treasure.
