The Disease of Art.....

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The Disease of Art.....

The Disease of Art.....--- I am sure by now that most of you are either sick of seeing it from CR team members, bored with it by now, or just about there by now with it. BUT (yes in caps) I thought that I would do something a little different than the others, and talk about how it has affected me, personally.... What is it I am talking about??

It's December 1, 2008, World AIDS Day.--- Every year, December 1 means one thing, world AIDS day. This disease,....this....manifest, this destroyer, makes no distinction on race, religion, color, or creed. And it has hit the art community as a whole larger than anything or anyone for that matter, ever imagined. It has hit us hard, and it has taken away some of the most creative minds and individuals whom ever created art. It knows no boundaries.....

Sadly I remember how it all began....---- Yes I am old enough to remember how it all began, when it was first discovered and really came to light in roughly 1985 or so. I remember being a Junior in High School and my class talking about it, how at that time, it was basically viewed as being a "Gay Disease", where if you weren't Gay, you had nothing to worry about. What little did we know then, and how we would pay for it later on....with being naive and miscalculating the risk and truths involved. It was only a few years later when we realized that people had been given blood transfusions with tainted HIV blood, that they became infected.....new born baby's born with the disease from a mother who used a dirty needle....and the 16 year old Captain of the Varsity High School Football team, who forgot to use protection.

20 some years have passed---- and what have we done? Obviously not enough. Is enough ever really enough though? I remember in 1990 when they  told us that by the year 2000 we would all know someone, or know someone who knew someone, who was infected with the disease HIV, or full blown AIDS. It was hard for me to believe back then that I would I would ever know anyone...yet that reality came to light in 1992, when I was sitting out on the patio at Arapaho Community College here in Denver, talking with a friend, Danielle, who told me that her Uncle had just died, who was an artist, from AIDS. His last years were very hard, and her family wasn't very accepting of him due to his lifestyle. I could see the sadness and fear in her eyes, of a struggle she fought to understand, why people don't help more, and why people are so small minded to think that is people who involve themselves with the same sex that get the disease. I remember her crying while looking at me, and I gave her a hug, and said, "He didn't die in vain....you watch". A month later the World Aids Quilt came to visit us at my school, and i remember seeing all the names.....all the thoughts and well wishes....and I remember standing over Danielle when she signed her Uncle's name....watching her struggle, it brought me to tears. Literally. And from that day on I was moved. rarely like I had been before. I realized a LOT of things back then, things which to this day, still hold a high value in my heart along the lines of acceptance and tolerance.

A Marching we will go!---- After all that, I began life at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, and it was there where I would realize just how much AIDS had affected the art community. I will not name names here, as respect to privacy, but here I learned even more. I remember on World AIDS Day back in 1994 at college, and how ALL the artwork in the entire school was draped in black, how all the cases that contained art in the hallways were covered and wrapped in black sheets..and how for the first time, I actually knew someone personally who was infected.....with HIV. And then another. And another...and yet another. All artist's, all schoolmates....all infected with the disease that causes AIDS. I didn't know what to say or do, when they had told me, I sat just stunned looking at them, they all seemed so normal and healthy. So...ok. yet this would change anything with how I viewed them, if anything it made me respect them even more, for being able to come to grips with your own mortality, knowing that you are sick with something that has no cure, and is deadly. Yes, art college was a real wake up call for me.....big time.

Today I ask---- that you all take a few minutes to think, remember, and to take into consideration, those whom have died from this ugly disease. Light a candle in rememberence for those who have passed on, and for those who fight the struggle everyday. For those who don't have the means of trying to fight, physically, mentally, or financially. We fight a battle with so many diseases, but AIDS is one big war. I prayt, one day, we will solve this disease.....and I hope you would do the same.....
---John