Student’s AIDS Poster Captures Award

For his poster about AIDS, Ventura High School senior Ian Hillway began with a simple idea and then made it a little complicated.

The 17-year-old created a collage of human forms cut from different-colored construction paper. But in addition to using the figures, he used the sheets from which the forms were cut.

The poster, now in Sacramento, won first place in a state Department of Education contest for World AIDS Day, recognized each Dec. 1.

In the artwork, titled “AIDS Is Everybody’s Problem,” the figures show that the scourge of acquired immune deficiency syndrome cuts across racial and ethnic boundaries, Ian said.

But whether Ian intended it, the poster brought across a more subtle idea, said Patti Post, art teacher at Ventura High.

Because the collage overlaps solid figures with cutout images, Post said, “There’s this quality of people disappearing but people also emerging and coming together.”

She said the image could suggest both the many victims of AIDS and the people who have pulled together to fight the disease.

As first-place winner in the high school category, Ian is scheduled to fly to Sacramento today for an awards ceremony, along with the winner of the middle school poster contest. Their posters will be reproduced for an AIDS awareness campaign.

But Ian was not the only winner from Ventura County.

Tracey Olmsted, a sophomore at Gateway Community School in Camarillo, took third place in the high school contest.

For Tracey, the poster contest had personal significance: One of her relatives has the disease, she said.

Motivated to help raise awareness of the disease, the 15-year-old is taking a class that trains youths to educate their peers about AIDS.

Her poster also reflects a sense of urgency about the disease. Showing a picture of the earth overlaid with clock hands, the artwork is labeled “A Time to Act.”