Daily Iowan

Issue date: 11/29/07 Section: 80 Hours

Media Credit: Courtesy of Elisabeth Petersen

Through brush strokes, computer clicks, and pencil scratches, more than 60 local artists blended their personal interpretations of the HIV/AIDS epidemic into a comprehensive exhibition for Face AIDS' Artists Respond to HIV/AIDS exhibition at the Chait Galleries Downtown. They are students, professionals, professors, and hobbyists. They are young, old, healthy, and ill. And together they call for a social change and deeper understanding of an issue facing those that might walk by us on the Pedestrian Mall and those suffering abroad.

With a $5 donation, attendees receive a beaded AIDS Awareness pin crafted by women in Africa as a ticket to the exhibition's Saturday opening to celebrate Global AIDS Day. Sponsored by seven local organizations and 12 local restaurants and businesses, the gallery show marks the UI Face AIDS chapter's second philanthropy - an event that represents a small piece of a larger puzzle pushing for a united front on global social change through the national campaign.

"AIDS is a cause in which there's a humongous gap between what people can do technologically and scientifically and what we are doing socially," Dave Ryan, Face AIDS' national executive director said from his home in Palo Alto, Calif. "A big way that social gap can be filled is through social action."

By creating a national community of like-minded people united behind the distribution of the beaded pins, Face AIDS endeavors to start a movement of committed individuals dedicated to the cause in all future professions and interests.

"[Face AIDS] is making students part of something bigger. It's a golden opportunity for young people," the 22-year-old Stanford graduate said. "Everything we do fights death."

The surrounding stories are portraits of participants, from the organizers to the activists to the painters - the people behind the scenes bringing HIV/AIDS to the forefront of Iowa City's social consciousness.



A shell around a life

One HIV positive Iowa City resident uses art to deal with her illness. And while she keeps most of her work private, this year's call for artist submissions compelled her to communicate some of her feelings about HIV and AIDS.

"I can't say I'm doing it for social change," she wrote anonymously via e-mail through a longtime friend, a UI associate professor. "I'm just trying to understand how the paths I chose took me to this place."

Continued...

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