Katie Wolf, a sophomore art student at Wake Forest University, bought four boxes of 64-count Crayola crayons so she would have enough flesh-colored ones to create Ley de Vivenda Equitativa/Fair Housing Act.
The collage, inspired by conversations between Wolf and Victor Mendoza, a Parkland High School student, has North Carolina’s Fair Housing Act in both Spanish and English with an overlay of multi-hued, melted-wax crayons running down the legalese of the document.
Her artwork is one of five student pieces in “Transforming Race Art Exhibition,” which will open today and run through Oct. 14 at START Gallery, Wake Forest University’s student art gallery in Reynolda Village. The opening will be from 6 to 8 tonight, after a discussion of the project and the art at 5:30.
“Transforming Race” is a joint effort between the Winston-Salem Human Relations Department and Wake Forest’s art department. The project originated last spring when David Finn, a Wake Forest art professor, approached the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts.
The project fit with the institute’s ACCORD initiative, which pairs “young, emerging artists with local nonprofits and governmental agencies to address community needs and issues related to culture, identity and inequity.”
“The Kenan Institute thought using art would be an interesting way for a race-relations forum. Art creates dialogue,” Finn said.
The 10 students come from varied ethnic backgrounds. Each college student was paired with a high-school student. They attended a diversity workshop and spent time working through ideas for artistic illustrations of their conversations, their experiences and their dreams for eliminating racism.
Five different and meaningful works emerged.
Wolf took Mendoza’s explanation to heart about how he decides who he speaks English to and who he speaks Spanish to. Wolf’s mother, a legal researcher, helped her find a law published in both Spanish and English.
“I was surprised to learn that of all the laws, the one of the only ones I could find that is offered in both Spanish and English is North Carolina’s Fair Housing Act,” Wolf said.
Lauren Arrington, a junior majoring in psychology and minoring in art, created Boxed In with input from Rae-Yao Lee, a Reagan High School senior. Although Lee’s parents came to Oregon from Taiwan during their college years, Lee had never really discussed race with her parents.
“For every single race, there will always be stereotypes. People think, ‘Oh, you’re Asian. You must be smart.’ That doesn’t really bother me because I do fulfill that stereotype. I think when it gets hurtful is when there are problems,” Lee said. “We learned that race can be a hard thing to talk about, but the only way to get past it is discuss culture and ethnicity.”
Cyoung9@triad.rr.com
For more information, call the START Gallery at 245-8508 or e-mail info@wfustartgallery.com.
The other pairs were: Courtney Whicker and Elizabeth Rosales (Parkland) — Get Over It — a quilted fabric; Mary Alyce McCullough and Jon Cunningham (Mount Tabor) — Unraveling — wire, fabric, Sculpey, windows; Becky Bowers and Brandon Wilkins (Parkland) — Spectrum – papier-mache and acrylic. Courteney Morris, a Wake student, made a documentary, YouTube.com/watch?v=GUJroHLxEjY.
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