Race + Education = Art. That is how local artists see the controversial issues of race and education - matters they consider too important to leave solely to those in the halls of power. During October, a selection of artists will present their own creative interpretations of how race impacts society and schools in "30 Moments of Art," an arts series that forms part of the 2010 Race and Pedagogy National Conference at University of Puget Sound next week. Artists and art experts are presenting their work and hosting events during a four-week period around and throughout the conference.

UPS art professor Elise Richman, an organizer of the arts events, says that political artists today each tell an individual story.

"They are like stones in a mosaic," she says. "Each has one point of view. Together they help us to make sense of the very complex world we live in today."

This aesthetic extravaganza was seeded a year ago when the chair of the conference, Director of the UPS African American Studies Program Dexter Gordon, asked Geoff Proehl, professor of theater arts, if he would arrange some arts events as part of the conference. Proehl saw this as an opportunity to allow artists to tell their stories about race and education in their own ways. Proehl, with help from colleagues C. Rosalind Bell and Elise Richman, compiled a 36-page folio of possible arts events dealing with race and education. He and his cohorts then whittled the events down to a potent and practical "30 Moments of Art."

"It was an exercise in Dionysian brainstorming, combined with a kind of arbitrary Apollonian geometry," Proehl says. "We wanted the art to create space in which work on these issues could move forward."

Well, if there‘s one thing the Weekly Volcano can get behind, it's the results of a little Dionysian brainstorming.

That brainstorming will result in the saturation of the conference and its surrounds with provocative arts, including a public procession carrying artist Marita Dingus' 63-foot Buddha as an African Enslaved across campus. A community mural by Tacoma's Fab-5 artists Chris Jordan and Kenji Stoll will be a work-in-progress in a "conversation space" in the student center. There will be an exhibit of photographs by Coast Salish photographer Matika Wilbur, as well as the installation House of Sound, by Vanessa Renwick, which examines the effects of gentrification on a Portland neighborhood. There also will be two free exhibitions at Kittredge Art Gallery, youth and school workshops, artist talks, music, voice and stage presentations.

Even the talks to be given by keynote speakers - civil rights leader Harry Belafonte; University of Maryland, Baltimore County President Freeman Hrabowski; Seattle University School of Law professors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic; and Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier - will be preceded or intertwined with poetry, music and song.

For conference registration or information, check out pugetsound.edu/RPNC or call 253.879.2435.

30 Moments of Art

Oct. 25-30
University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner, Tacoma