Drexston Redway’s Work Featured on CPALMS

Drexston Redway, a rising senior studying studio art and marketing, reflected the link between poverty and being a minority through personal and local experiences, and how it affects young women in those situations. His research project embraced the idea that statistics and data can be represented through art and spark critical thinking about the community and gender issues.

In this project, the subject of a six-minute video on CPALMS, Redway layered cork on plywood to display areas of Tallahassee suffering from large amounts of poverty. The higher the cork, the more poverty was in that area. He also studied the city’s racial diversity to find the link between poverty and race.

“I used the information on racial diversity and poverty to create both aspects of the map,” Redway said. “If the map tends to break up a lot, then there’s a lot of diversity. If the map gets high, then there’s a lot of poverty, and if it’s both then it’s an intersection of the two. I found that highly diverse areas were also highly impoverished areas.”

Redway used these two factors to establish a common ground with the girls, then interviewed them about being minorities in poverty, as well as being a student at PACE.

“I asked them questions to get their perspective on life. ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ and ‘What are some outside perceptions of PACE students?’ I wanted to break the stereotypes about the school.”

Redway aims to teach at the college level and continue to research, and advance conversations about minorities and poverty. His research was funded by FSU’s Public Service Research Fellowship, which supports research of a community problem that directly benefits community-based organizations, programs, and/or specific community groups in a domestic or international setting.

Article courtesy of FSU Profiles. Images courtesy of CPALMS.