‘SILENT-BID AUCTION’ TO BENEFIT AIDS VICTIMS

Tortue Gallery director Mallory Freeman hopes to raise $60,000 for people with AIDS at a “Silent-Bid Auction Benefit” art sale and exhibit Friday through Oct. 3.

About 125 artworks by more than 100 artists have been donated (by the artists as well as by collectors and dealers) for the auction, whose proceeds will benefit the Shanti Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides emotional support for people who have contacted AIDS, to their families and friends, and to the bereaved. Shanti (a Sanskrit word meaning inner peace ) Foundation also teaches people how to minimize their risk of contacting the illness.

“What prompted me to do the auction,” Freeman said, “was just that I learned about the foundation and what they do, and I knew they needed financial help. . . . What they try to accomplish is very noble and certainly worth our effort in trying to help.

“All checks will be written directly to Shanti,” Freeman added. “That shows everyone that the gallery is in no way involved financially. We are simply donating our time and space and energy to the cause.”

Shanti Foundation counselors are all volunteers, said Dede Kuper, director of the foundation’s emotional support services. “They come from all walks of life, they are of all ages and most are not from the mental health field. They are trained in a 50-hour, two-weekend training session to be a compassionate presence, to be a listener, not to give advice.”

The Shanti Foundation, modeled after a similar organization in San Francisco and established here four years ago, also helps those diagnosed with AIDS-related complications, she said.

Paintings, sculpture and graphics will be included in the auction/exhibit by such artists as Lita Albuquerque, Carlos Almarez, Tony Berlant, Sam Francis, Marvin Harden, Michael McMillen, Jim Morphesis, Claes Oldenburg, Edward Ruscha, Masami Teraoka, Michael Todd, Joyce Treiman and June Wayne.

An opening reception will be held on Friday from 7-10 p.m. at Tortue Gallery, 2917 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. A $10 donation will be charged for this reception. Otherwise, viewing of the works and the placing of silent bids is free for the duration of the benefit.

REFOCUS: After a summer hiatus, the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside is reopening on Sept. 23 with new hours: Wednesday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m. The museum, which will move into new quarters in downtown Riverside in fall, 1988, closed to allow its staff to prepare for the relocation. Two exhibits, “A New Museum: Collections & Architecture,” and “Intimate Encounters: Photographic Portraits From the Collection,” will be on view at the museum when it reopens.

SUPPORT AND EXPOSURE: Five emerging visual artists from California’s central coast have won the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s “Meet the Artists” competition that will award each a $5,000 fellowship and the opportunity to participate in a nine-month networking program culminating in a group exhibition at the museum next spring.

Competition winners are painters Phoebe Brunner, Dan Connally and Cynthia Ann Kelsey-Gordon, and Ann Hamilton, who creates multimedia sculptural installations, and Macduff Everton, a photographer/storyteller and performance artist.

Howard N. Fox, the County Museum of Art’s curator of contemporary art; Mary Jane Jacob, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s chief curator, and Sidra Stich, UC Berkeley’s University Art Museum senior curator, selected the winners from 227 artists from Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties. Artists working in painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture and mixed-media were invited to compete.

The competition’s nine-month program will allow the artists to meet and work with one another and other arts professionals. The museum designed the competition, funded in part by a grant from the California Arts Council, to “seek out, support and provide fellowship and professional opportunities” to emerging artists.

A NEW HAT: Jacqueline Kain, co-producer of KCET’s 18-hour preview of the current Los Angeles Festival, has joined the Long Beach Museum of Art’s curatorial staff, specializing in video exhibitions.

“I like blurred edges, reading all of the subtle shades of gray that exist between black and white,” Kain said in a prepared statement. “Video is at the crossroads between film and television. There’s a confusion of borders. I find that exciting.”

Kain, who will work with the museum’s Video Annex, also currently serves as research assistant in computer graphics with James Blinn at Cal Tech. Her resume includes work at the British Film Institute and Channel 4 Television in London, at the American Center and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, at the Kitchen in New York and most recently at the American Film Institute where she was director of TV and Video Exhibitions.

Kain succeeds former video-curator Connie Fitzsimons who, during her eight years at the museum, established a television series of independent video for statewide cable distribution. In related news, 13 local artists have been granted free access to production and post-production equipment at the museum’s Video Annex for the development or completion of 10- video works.

The winners of the museum’s 1987-88 Artist Access Awards (chosen by outgoing video-curator Fitzsimons) and their projects are:

Stuart Bender, “Ghost Money”; Morgan Thomas, “Face It/Embrace Her”; John Arvanites, “Monuments”; Nancy Buchanan, “Sightlines: A Treatment”; Erika Sunderburg, “Displaced Termination--Trailers”; David Jacobson and James Seligman, “Refuse”; Harry Kipper, “Actor Says Goodnight”; Pat Kelley, “Acoma on the Bay”; Cheri Gaulke, Sue Maberry and Kathleen Forrest, “Invocation”; Doug Henry, an untitled work.