A Failure to Communicate : Few Attend O.C. Forum on How the Arts Can Help in AIDS Crisis

Paltry attendance at Monday’s panel on AIDS and the arts strikingly exemplified a key challenge voiced by several speakers: How to arouse wider participation in addressing the epidemic.

“I’m quite frankly shocked today at how few people are in the audience,” said panelist Jane Bauman, an artist in residence at Newport Harbor Art Museum.

Artists, arts administrators, business officials, AIDS experts and other local leaders made up the 18-member panel, designed to explore how the arts, in collaboration with other parts of the community, can make a greater contribution to solving the AIDS crisis.

It was part of Art for Life’s Sake (AFLS), a two-month series of AIDS awareness events taking place in Irvine and Santa Ana through May 23. Participants include artists, restaurateurs, fashion designers and musicians.

The two-hour event also was an Art Forum lecture series offering, which typically draws about 60 people each week to Rancho Santiago College. But despite a prominent announcement in a newsletter sent to roughly 800 readers, only about 50 people attended the wide-ranging discussion at RSC’s 420-seat Phillips Hall.

Some panelists guessed the stigma still attached to AIDS kept many away.

“A lot of our core (Art Forum) audience is not here,” said Art Forum organizer and panel moderator Mike McGee.

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Two of Orange County’s biggest arts organizations--the Orange County Performing Arts Center and South Coast Repertory--were conspicuous by their absence from the dais, despite invitations that they send representatives.

Sharon Jaquith, a trustee with the Anaheim-based Leo Freedman Foundation, jumped to the center’s defense, noting that a reception following an August performance of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project will be held as a benefit for American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR) and AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County (ASFOC).

AFLS founder Mark Smith, whose brother is HIV positive, argued that the White Oak benefit was “nice” but that it would reach only “those that can afford” tickets. He stressed that arts groups should stage AIDS-themed productions, not merely post-performance benefit receptions.

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Contacted after the panel ended, center spokesman Greg Patterson said the center foundation relations director Mickey Shaw, who had been slated to appear on the panel, “had a personal scheduling conflict.” The center did not send a substitute, he said, because “management wasn’t aware” that Shaw, board vice president of ASFOC, hadn’t attended.

Patterson also noted that the AMFAR benefit was “Baryshnikov’s request,” not the center’s idea.

An SCR spokesman said producing-artistic director David Emmes also had a scheduling conflict and that the theater was unable to find a proxy.

After a short but stirring film about AIDS by Laguna Beach documentary maker C.L. Roy Nesbitt, the discussion began with statistics from Penny Weismuller, the Orange County Health Care Agency’s manager of disease control:

As of early this year, there were a total of 2,000 people with AIDS and an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 people infected with HIV in Orange County.

Many panelists spoke of difficulties generating interest in AIDS-related arts events, whether that means by presenting AIDS-themed exhibits, plays or concerts, or staging regular activities to raise funds for or provide education and awareness about AIDS.

Karen Shanley, Orange Coast College’s dance department chairwoman, said the first OCC AIDS benefit performance she staged several years ago “probably (drew the) smallest audience we ever had” for an annual faculty dance concert.

Laguna Beach artist Mark Chamberlain said a more recent AIDS-themed photography project he worked on attracted “phenomenal” interest from within the AIDS community, but attracting “a general audience was more difficult.”

“We have to find other ways to take (AIDS awareness) to (the public) because they won’t come looking for it,” said Bill Wood, vice president of community relations for Cypress-based PacifiCare Foundation.

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Laguna Art Museum director Charles Desmarais described his museum’s AIDS awareness efforts as “really minor” but said it has tried to find ways to reach people who don’t come looking for information. During last year’s annual Day Without Art, for instance, the museum draped its exterior with black banners, one with a red ribbon (the AIDS-awareness symbol) with the idea of sending a message to anyone driving or walking by.

Priscilla Munro, executive director of AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County, said the Orange County arts community has not done enough for AIDS, particularly compared to Los Angeles County, where artist-designed billboards about preventing the disease are displayed in West Hollywood.

“The time and place for that is now,” said Munro. She urged artists to volunteer at her agency, which helps some 500 people with AIDS, many of whom have requested hands-on art workshops.

“We’re a long way from home,” agreed Susan Sullivan, an AIDS education coordinator with the county’s Red Cross chapter, which sponsors an annual, community-wide AIDS poster contest. “There’s a tremendous potential for members of the art community to become more involved.”

Several panelists also spoke of finding funding for AIDS projects. Huntington Beach artist Mary-Linn Hughes, who has worked extensively on art projects with AIDS patients, said she learned that AIDS organizations were too overwhelmed with their own financial needs to help, so she went to the arts community.

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Hughes, who led photography workshops from 1987 to 1991 at Laguna Shanti, a Laguna Beach AIDS services organization, received funding from the California Arts Council and the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts.

Perhaps the most contentious moment of the day came when Myrella Moses, an artist who curated an AFLS group show at the Irvine Marketplace, asked Desmarais to display the exhibit at the museum’s South Coast Plaza annex.

“Say yes,” Moses said.

Desmarais agreed to view the exhibit but raised the sometimes divisive issue of quality versus intent.

“Just because we are interested in the topic,” he said, “doesn’t mean we show every work of art that deals with the topic.”

AFLS founder Smith, who collaborated with Moses on a piece in the exhibit, argued that raising public awareness about AIDS--not quality--was paramount.

“This is bigger than art,” he charged. “It’s life.”

The idea that the arts can heighten AIDS awareness and help people overcome denial more profoundly and effectively than any list of statistics caused no dissent.

Said Weismuller of the county’s health-care agency: “We need information that touches our hearts so we can have compassion for people that develop this infection.”

* “The First Exhibition,” with works by about 25 Southern California artists, through June 13 at the Art for Life’s Sake Gallery, Irvine Marketplace, Space B163, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday; and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday. Admission is free. “Encore,” a one-act play, will be staged May 14 and 15 at 8 p.m. at the gallery. Free. (714) 759-3492.