ASU students illustrated the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” Wednesday afternoon by painting HIV and AIDS memorials and visions of peace on Hayden Lawn.
In celebration of World AIDS Day, members of the ASU community gathered on the Tempe campus to participate in the annual Paint for Peace, an event where students are asked to paint their idea of peace and share a positive message for those living with HIV and AIDS.
HEAL International, Electro-pop humanitarian Stefan Pruett and the online artist community Spraygraphic.com started Paint for Peace in 2008.
“A fundamental part of HEAL’s mission in Arizona is to do HIV and AIDS prevention among youth,” HEAL International Executive Director Damien Salamone said. “This World AIDS Day event is a really great way to invite young people, and the community at large, to participate in an activity that will shed more light on HIV and AIDS and will bring people in a peaceful environment to learn more about it while having a good time.”
Business marketing sophomore Ashley Guevara painted a person with a red ribbon around them surrounded by a heart.
“It seemed like a fun thing to do and getting people aware about AIDS,” Guevara said.
Every painting made during the five-hour event incorporated a red ribbon to symbolize ASU’s support for those living with HIV and AIDS.
Business supply chain management senior Bradley Cotan said he was recruited to participate in Paint for Peace by a HEAL
member between classes.
“Someone grabbed me on the sidewalk and asked me if I want to paint for peace, and I like peace and painting so I hopped in,” Cotan said.
He feels peace is something alive and serene, he said.
By Shayne Dwyer
“I believe peace is wholeness, nothing missing or broken, the complete absence of chaos,” Cotan said. “It’s something alive and active, a kind of restoration that completes, moves and changes.”
Salamone said HEAL will be choosing paintings that commemorate those lost to HIV and AIDS and add them to a memorial quilt that travels throughout the United States.
“[The quilt] is an incredible visual demonstration of how many people in the United States have been lost to HIV and AIDS,” he said. “The National AIDS Quilt is really a visual depiction of something that was hidden for so many years.”
The quilt first began in 1987 by the NAMES Project Foundation, an Atlanta-based group that is responsible for maintaining the quilt.
Each year hundreds of new patches containing names of those who are lost to AIDS are sewn into the memorial quilt, according to the group’s website.
Salamone said a negative stigma is attached to those who are living with HIV and AIDS and many won’t admit they have the illness.
“So many people who are HIV positive face stigma,” he said. “Paint for Peace is about bringing peace to their lives and peacefully increasing awareness about HIV and the related stigma for everyone in the community.”
Salamone said ASU students with HIV and AIDS are no different than any other.
“Through all of the jokes and all of the negativity about HIV, it’s just a virus; a virus that affects anybody, white or black, man or woman,” he said. “Our contribution to that is to make sure young people are still aware that HIV and AIDS is still affecting about a million people in the United States.”
Salamone said HIV and AIDS is dramatically on the rise in minority communities, and HEAL hopes to put the word out that HIV is still an issue and good choices can be made to avoid infection.
Michael Bowler, a fifth-year interdisciplinary studies student, painted a red ribbon offset by the words, “Being aware is the 1st step.”
“I think the first step in anything is acknowledging that it’s there,” Bowler said.
Bowler said he hopes ASU students fighting HIV and AIDS will “try to keep their heads up and remain positive.”
Reach the reporter at travis.mcknight@asu.edu
