WexCast

For this episode, we listen in on a conversation between three Wex staffers who are essential to the center’s efforts to make the arts accessible for all. Wex Accessibility Specialist Tammy Eckard, Events Manager Francesca Mouery, and Social Media and Digital Accessibility Manager Austin Dunn sat down to discuss the role each of them play in this work, how the work is evolving, and how Tammy is bu...

This WexCast features original poems by local poets that were read as part of the January 2025 Sonnets and Cinema film series. Guest curated by poet, Matter News columnist, and Streetlight Guild founder Scott Woods, the series focused on three documentaries that touch on the question of whether art can change the world. Each screening was preceded by readings by Woods and another Columbus poet: Sa...

For this addition to our "Intro" series, head of film/video Dave Filipi offers a primer on the pre-code era, a time in early Hollywood when rules around sex, violence, and other controversial elements on screen were made to be broken. It's prompted by the film series The Sound of Screaming, which offers three double features of genuinely creepy early horror films including genre classics such as F...

For this episode, we’re throwing back to our February 2024 film series, Sonnets and Cinema, to share audio of the live poetry readings that accompanied each of the programs celebrating poetry in film. Among the poets you’ll hear is the curator of the series, Scott Woods, who’s also a Columbus Metropolitan Library worker and a columnist for Matter News as well the proprietor of the arts space Stree...

For this episode, we continue our Intro series on artists and movements you should know about with a primer on the life and work of Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish author who was born in 1850 and died in 1904 and who’s still known for his ghost stories. Our special guest for this Intro episode is trumpeter and vocalist Jean Laurenz, Hearn’s great-great grandniece. Laurenz will be coming to the Wex March...

For this episode, we hear from Hope Ginsburg, who conceived and directed the spring 2023 Wex exhibition Meditation Ocean, and some of her collaborators within the Meditation Ocean Constellation, Sara Smith and Gina Siepel. While Meditation Ocean left the Wex in July 2023, a recent Climate Impact Report on the exhibition for the collective Artists Commit brought to light the resources saved and emi...

Intro provides an entry point to the work of artists or works that aren’t household names. In this case, it’s Serbian documentary filmmaker Zelimir Zilnik, the subject of an October 2023 retrospective that will dovetail with this year’s Unorthodocs festival of creation nonfiction films. The event includes a visit from the filmmaker for screenings October 26 and 28.. Chris Stults, the lead programm...

For this episode, we revisit an engaging conversation between central Ohio-based composer and sound artist Brian Harnetty and Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a former Wex Film/Video Studio resident and the director of the beautiful new documentary, King Coal. The film screened at the Wex in September and is currently making its way across the country in a limited engagement. Together, they discuss the u...

UMM / AL ATLAL is a collaborative sound piece composed by Esra Canoğulları and Lara Sarkissian. This hour-long piece deconstructs and abstracts a live performance of Umm Kulthum's song Al Atlal. Umm Kultum was known for live performances that lasted hours, with individual songs lasting up to an hour each, the crowd participation playing an essential role in these durational and enchanting live sho...

For this episode, we’re happy to present an introduction to the wild Dario Argento film from 1985, Phenomena, done by Columbus writer and arts presenter Scott Woods. Phenomena is part of a summer '23 salute to the films of the Italian horror icon. If you missed our screening, the full-length Integral cut that we presented is available in a limited box set through Synapse Films, and the slightly sh...

This episode continues our series sharing words from the artists whose work has been presented as part of the Wex’s winter-spring exhibitions. Based out of Colorado, Anna Tsouhlarakis aims to create dialogue and break stereotypes around Indigenous art. For her presentation at the Wex, the artist continued The Native Guide Project. Tsouhlarakis speaks specifically about the Columbus edition of this...

For this episode, we're happy to present a recent public conversation between Sa'dia Rehman and their sister, Bushra Rehman. Sa'dia's work has been featured in the Wex's winter-spring exhibitions via the solo show "the river runs slow and deep and all the bones of my ancestors / have risen to the surface to knock and click like the sounds of trees in the air". Bushra is an acclaimed poet and story...

2023 Ohio Shorts juror Colin West is a Columbus native and a graduate of Ohio State and the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He’s directed numerous shorts along with three feature-length films including 2021’s Double Walker, starring Sylvie Mix, and the recently released, critically acclaimed Linoleum, starring Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seahorn, which won the Sloan Science o...

For this episode, we sit down with April Sunami and Aimee Wissman, two highly respected Columbus based artists who've been working with Wex Art & Resilience Director Tracie McCambridge and the leadership and staff of Sanctuary Night, a sacred space for vulnerable women. Sanctuary Night has opened the doors of its location on the west side of Columbus to artists through a residency program run by A...

For this episode, we share thoughts on the fall 2022 exhibition Sharing Circles: Carol Newhouse and the WomanShare Collective from artist and activist Carol Newhouse and the two curators who worked with her on her first major museum show: Wex Associate Curator of Exhibitions Daniel Marcus and Carmen Winant, an associate professor and the Roy Lichtenstein Chair of Studio Art at Ohio State, and an a...

For this episode, we have a conversation with Sam Green, the subject of a monthlong retrospective at the Wex beginning September 28 and featuring the Ohio premiere of his immersive new documentary, 32 Sounds, September 29. As he explains, Sam’s relationship with the Wex goes back to his first film, 1997’s Rainbow Man/John 3:16, and includes an Artist Residency Award for A Thousand Thoughts, his 20...

Syllabus for Black Love is the lush multichannel installation by jaamil olawale kosoko, a recipient of a Wexner Center Artist Residency Award who worked with numerous Wex staffers over a three year period. For this WexCast, we’re excited to share a conversation between kosoko and Alexis McCrimmon, an editor in the Wex Film/Video Studio and a filmmaker in her own right, moderated by Film/Video Stud...

For this episode, Film/Video Director Dave Filipi offers a brief intro to Federico Fellini, the legendary Italian filmmaker behind such classics as La Strada, 8 1/2, and La Dolce Vita. All of those films and more will be presented as part of a summer ‘22 retrospective at the Wex, which runs July 7 through August 18. Dave discusses the trajectory of Fellini’s career, the big break that helped launc...

For this Wexcast, we’re excited to share a micro-essay you won’t find anywhere else, read by its author, MacArthur Genius grant recipient and Columbus native Hanif Abdurraqib. Invited by Wex Film/Video curators to introduce a screening of Michael Schultz’s classic comedy Car Wash, Abdurraqib wove stories from his neighborhood, the making of the film and its score, the performance politics of Soul...

For this episode, we share a conversation between Film/Video Director David Filipi and filmmaker Bill Morrison, who received a Wex Artist Residency Award for his latest project, The Village Detective: a song cycle, a meditation on Soviet cinema and star making built around a print of a 1969 film starring Russian actor Mikhail Zharov that was found a few years ago on the ocean floor off the coast o...

A mini version of the conversation between Wex Associate Curator Lucy Zimmerman, Learning & Public Practice Director Dionne Custer-Edwards, and artist Baseera Khan. Khan has created new commissioned work for the Winter 2021 exhibition Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment. Image: Baseera Khan, Column 6, 2019. Pink Panther foamular, plywood, resin dye, custom handma...

Wex Associate Curator Lucy Zimmerman and Learning & Public Practice Director Dionne Custer-Edwards speak with Columbus artist Danielle Julian Norton about her work, the outdoor art studio and residency space Zippitydirtdada, and her commissioned installation for the Winter 2021 exhibition Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment.

Wex Associate Curator Lucy Zimmerman and Learning & Public Practice Director Dionne Custer-Edwards speak with artist Baseera Khan about her work, her inspirations, and her commission for the Winter 2021 exhibition Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment.

Taryn Simon: Assembled Audience combines audio of dozens of individuals clapping solo to create computer-generated rounds of applause. For this WexCast, Alana Ryder, the Wex's Manager of Public and University Programs, talks with Senior Design Engineer Steve Jones and Exhibition Designer and Preparator Nick Stull about what went into constructing a space for the sound installation at the Wex as pa...

Enjoy a conversation between Wexner Center Assistant Film/Video Curator Chris Stults and Sam Pollard about his 2017 documentary Two Trains Runnin', a fascinating look at political and cultural upheaval during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964. The film follows separate groups of young men—musicians, college students, and record collectors—who head south to coax long-retired bluesmen Son House and Skip...