Great Wall: a Mural Victory Over AIDS : Painting: 2 Orange County artists’ Los Angeles work, which is a reminder that ‘love is for everyone,’ will be dedicated Sunday.

Their faces are featureless, seen only in silhouette. They could be white or black, straight or gay, rich or poor. They have no specific identity; they embrace every identity.

“We wanted to really represent all the different people who have been affected by AIDS and HIV,” said artist Mary-Linn Hughes, explaining the images in a 50-by-12-foot mural she and another artist have painted near Culver City.

Hughes, who has addressed the epidemic in other works, created the mural with fellow Orange County artist Reginald Zachary for Neighborhood Pride: Great Walls Unlimited, a program established in 1988 and funded by the city of Los Angeles that has produced 36 murals throughout the city, each reflecting the varied communities in which they stand.

The AIDS mural was commissioned by the program’s sponsor, the Social and Public Arts Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, and will be dedicated in a public ceremony Sunday. SPARC officials, who have catalogued about 10,000 murals worldwide, believe this to be the first that addresses AIDS. Adorning one wall of the Minority AIDS Project (MAP) on West Jefferson Boulevard near La Brea Avenue, the mural illustrates the clinic’s mission, its function and the people it serves.

Founded in 1985 to serve African-Americans and other people of color, MAP is a nonprofit organization run by blacks and Latinos, who also make up its bilingual clientele of about 300, according to MAP officials. It provides free support and assistance for people with AIDS or those infected with HIV, counseling, emergency funding, medical referrals, immigration information, education and other services.

The mural shows three of the five silhouetted figures holding hands and a fourth speaking to the last, “sharing” helpful information about AIDS the way MAP does, Hughes said while putting finishing touches on the mural earlier this week. All the figures are superimposed over a colorful background “quilt” made up of geometric shapes.

“The quilt refers in general to comfort” offered at MAP, said Hughes, who until last summer led a self-portrait photography workshop at Laguna Shanti, a Laguna Beach AIDS clinic. The quilt’s free-form design imitates an African-American “improvisational” quilt-making style that allows stitchers to make things up as they go along rather than adhering to a set pattern.

Some quilt panels contain simple, black-and-white symbols of clinic services: a bag of groceries stands for its food bank, a bed for its off-site shelter, a telephone for its hot line.

At the mural’s center, two men--one black and one Latino--hug each other, and off to one side stands a smiling black woman, cradling her child. Among other images are a globe, “representing the fact that we are all living with AIDS,” Hughes said, a woman’s face, racked with grief, and a church.

The church represents the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church, founded by the Rev. Carl Bean, who also co-founded MAP and owns the modest building, where the church’s Sunday services are held in the lobby, Hughes said. One ministry motto and a guiding principal of MAP is “Love Is for Everyone,” which appears on the mural. It also includes a similar phrase that Hughes and Zachary wrote, hoping to convey the idea that anyone can get AIDS:

I am your co-worker, I am the married couple down the street, I am your high school teacher, the woman you sit next to on the bus, the plumber who fixes your sink, the athlete you watch on television, the field worker who harvests your food, I am your brother, your sister, I am a person living with AIDS.

Despite its reference to “the athlete you watch on television,” the two artists wrote the phrase before basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson revealed that he had tested positive for HIV, Hughes said.

Before receiving the mural commission, Hughes, a Huntington Beach resident and Irvine Valley College photography instructor, had been collaborating on a different project with Zachary, a Tustin resident who has a master’s degree in studio art from UC Irvine and has concentrated lately on performance art. In 1990, he performed in a group piece by Tim Miller at Santa Monica’s Highways performance space.

“It just seemed logical in a lot of ways” to collaborate on the mural, she said, so the two decided to work together, splitting an $8,000 fee.

When another artist SPARC had lined up for their 12th 1991 commission couldn’t complete the project, officials turned to Hughes, who had worked as a SPARC administrator from 1980 to 84.

The project posed a challenge for both artists, neither of whom had ever painted a mural. But it was a challenge Hughes relished, even though she works most often in photography or installation. Her other major AIDS project was an exhibit of photographic portraits of Orange County residents with AIDS and others affected by the disease, including family, friends and lovers.

“We’re not really painters,” said Hughes. But “I love learning new things; I thrive on that.”

To start the project about six months ago, the artists visited several AIDS organizations, selected the one that had the most mural-friendly wall as well as programming they respected. Next, they spent about three months “hanging out” at the clinic, talking to clients and staff, asking what they wanted to see in the mural, Hughes said.

During the mural’s creation, the work has had a tangible benefit for MAP, said the Rev. Zachary Jones, a MAP health educator and assistant pastor of the Unity Fellowship Church. Before, MAP staffers had to remove graffiti at least once a week from the wall that now sports the mural. Since Hughes and Zachary began painting, however, graffiti have appeared only once.

“The community has really seemed to recognize the mural,” Jones said with a smile.

In an effort to further involve the community, people who have lost loved ones to AIDS will be invited to write or submit those names to be written on the quilt portion of the mural during Sunday’s 2 p.m. dedication ceremony.

“We decided to do that so the mural could serve as a memorial, a place to remember, for people to be remembered,” Hughes said.

According to SPARC officials, each mural produced through its Great Walls program costs about $30,000, which covers artists’ fees, materials and other costs.

Encouragement from passersby made the Los Angeles mural project especially enjoyable, Hughes added. But something else may leave a more lasting impression.

“Certainly the realities of AIDS are not new to me,” Hughes said, “so what was particularly rewarding was seeing the kind of love and compassion and dedication that MAP brings to this enormous problem, with very little resources.”

“Minority AIDS Project: Love Is for Everyone,” a mural by Mary-Linn Hughes and Reginald Zachary, will be dedicated at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Minority AIDS Project, 5149 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles. Information: (213) 936-4949.