ELLE Field Trip and Virtual Artist's Visit

 whose medium is photography. Her exhibit (Jan-Feb 2026) at the Wesleyan Leadership lab is a collection of three bodies of her work.  I was so happy when the Wesleyan Leadership Lab director, Alexis Gregg invited my students and I to come see the show, because one room was set apart especially for people with visual impairments, which is right up our alley.

We couldn't make our schedules work to be there at the same time as the artist, but Aleixis did a great job in audio describing pieces like the banners of portraits of black women portraying large monuments in American history, such as liberty and justice, with slave crops, such as tobacco and cotton being used as props.

 

She also lead a discussion on resilience as we learned about a series of photographs for people who moved to a new place and learned a new culture where they were a minority.

But the most meaningful part of the trip was getting to explore the embossed paper images and the Brailled descriptions. There was also a soundscape of familiar noises such as a beep kickball, which is used in a modified version of baseball.

There were glass light boxes with images of faces which were cyanotypes. These also had Braille dots on the textured glass.

The following day, we had a zoom call to get to talk to the artist. She had more questions for them they they did for her, but the discussion was meaningful and the students were left feeling inspired and seen. Stephanie Elle is a talented artist who works notices the marginalized and gives them a place at the table in the art world.