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WexCast: Pages 2019

Jun 04, 2019

Students in the Wexner Center's 2018-19 Pages program; photo: Katie Spengler Gentry

Each year, the Wex connects high school students from around central Ohio with a curated selection of art experiences through the Pages program. Students also get to interact with the artists behind the work and create their own responses to what they've seen, which are collected and printed in the annual Pages Anthology, which is embedded below.

For this WexCast, Wex educator and Pages coordinator Dionne Custer Edwards traveled to Big Walnut High School to talk to Sofi and Bri, two of the students to contribute to the 2019 Pages book. They discuss the year's art experiences—the exhibition Mickalene Thomas: I Can't See You Without Me, the documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening by RaMell Ross, and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko's performance Séancers—and how those programs empowered Bri and Sofi to explore difficult subject matter for their Pages piece. 

Wexner Center for the Arts educator and Pages program coordinator Dionne Custer Edwards; photo: Katie Spengler Gentry

Lead image: Student participants in the 2018-19 Pages program with their printed anthologies. Above: Dionne Custer Edwards kicks off the Pages Open Mic and Reception for 2018-19 in the Wex's lower lobby. All photos: Katie Spengler Gentry.

"It's really gratifying to have something that you made out there for the world to see. And even if people disagree with it, it's good to have a conversation—any conversation, because it's better than the silence that was there before."
Sofi, Pages 2018-19 student
Art and writing by Bri and Sofi, two Big Walnut High School students who participated in the 2018-19 Pages program at the Wexner Center for the Arts

Excerpt of Bri and Sofi's contribution to the 2018-19 Pages Anthology.

"There's no way that these conversations are going to be had if we aren't at least a little bit uncomfortable."
Bri, Pages 2018-19 student