ARTWORKS ON SALE AT AIDS BENEFIT

The arts community, one of the hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, is starting to take things into its own hands.

In New York, more than 60 galleries are participating in “Art Against AIDS,” giving half of their proceeds from selected sales to research toward developing an AIDS vaccine.

Here in San Diego, artists have mobilized to assemble an exhibition and benefit auction to raise funds for the direct assistance of AIDS patients.

More than 30 San Diego and Los Angeles artists--including Eleanor Antin, David Avalos, Raul Guerrero, Margaret Honda, Dietrich Jenny, Mario Lara, Miroshi Miyazaki, Patricia Patterson, Brent Riggs, Robert Sanchez, Italo Scanga, Ernest Silva, Deborah Small, Sally Stein and Gillian Theobald--have donated their work to “Artists for AIDS Assistance II,” on display through June 27 at Installation (930 E St.). Bidding for the work will begin on the evening of the 27th, during a black-tie reception.

It was the death last fall of local playwright Philip-Dimitri Galas from AIDS that “brought the issue close to home and generated a need to do something,” said artist Paul Best. As a constructive response to the losses AIDS has inflicted upon the arts community and the community at large, Best and a small group of friends formed Artists for AIDS Assistance. Through its art-related benefits, the organization hopes to raise consciousnesses as well as funds.

“Artists for AIDS Assistance I,” held in February at the Lyceum Theatre, offered a four-hour program of performance, music and dance works and raised nearly $10,000. The second benefit involves visual artists, “serious artists doing contemporary work, who are also concerned about the issue,” Best said.

“Artists all over are thrilled about this,” he added, for the show offers a forum to examine the personal impact AIDS has had upon them and their work. “Artists can relate to this cause and this organization.”

Scanga, who contributed a print to the show, concurred. “My friends are dying,” he said. “It’s a serious and tragic thing.”

Both the nature and the quality of the work included in “Artists for AIDS Assistance II” promise the viewer an enlightening, even educational experience. Small’s contribution to the show examines precedents for the type of social panic spreading as rampantly as AIDS cases themselves.

In researching her piece, Small found that the AIDS phenomenon has parallels with earlier incidents of scapegoating and quarantining. Her work incorporates 14th-Century images of Jews being burned after being accused of having spread the plague.

“The real plague,” she concluded, “is panic, homophobia.” In making the work, “I really had to think about the issue much more clearly. I started paying more attention to how AIDS is dealt with on TV, especially the use of terms like ‘victims’ and ‘innocent victims.’ ”

Avalos’ work in the show also focuses on the social dimension of AIDS. “People with the disease aren’t seen as victims, but as domestic terrorists,” he said. “It’s a major civil rights and human rights problem. It’s an issue that needs to be discussed, and the easy, law-enforcement solutions being offered must be resisted.”

Praising the benefit as a way for artists to become engaged with the issue, Avalos added that “it is possible to create a kind of art that enables us to see what societal relations have become in 1987, and to see that simplistic approaches won’t do.”

All proceeds from the auction will go to the San Diego County AIDS Assistance Fund to help AIDS patients with such immediate, basic needs as rent, food, clothing, utility bills and even funeral expenses.

“If there’s a need, we do it,” said Garrett Dettling, psychotherapist and vice president of the fund. This has included flying patients to other cities to visit their parents, or bringing their parents here.

Now in its fourth year, the AIDS Assistance Fund has raised more than $260,000 from private donors and fund-raisers centered primarily in the gay community.

“What excites me about Artists for AIDS Assistance I and II is that it’s a way to get our message out to more people, to let people know that AIDS is not a gay disease,” Dettling said.

The main thing, Best agreed, “is to have a strong show, to get the word out.”