LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN 2019 Valentine Making Workshops

For LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN 2019, Visual AIDS, the Fire Island Artist Residency, Dieu Donné, and Positive Women's Network – USA hosted four workshops to make handmade paper valentine cards on January 28 and 29 at Dieu Donné to support women living with HIV.

The workshops brought together women from Positive Women’s Network – USA, Iris House, and She’s So VOCAL (Voices of Community Activists & Leaders), as well as Visual AIDS Artist+ Members and Fire Island Artist Residency alumni. This year's workshops produced 800 valentines cards for LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN. Since 2015, the project has produced and distributed over 2,000 cards.

LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN is an ongoing project established by Visual AIDS Artist Member Jessica Whitbread in 2013 that uses Valentine’s Day as a backdrop to create a platform for individuals and communities to engage in public and private acts of love and caring for women living with HIV. Working from a place of strength, LPW models interconnectedness, relationship building, loving oneself, and loving ones' community.

LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN 2019 is funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the M·A·C AIDS Fund. In-kind sponsorship is provided by Tish & Snooky's Manic Panic NYC.

Photographs by Michael McFadden.

Dieu Donné is the world's leading cultural institution dedicated to serving artists through the collaborative creation of cutting-edge contemporary art using the process of hand papermaking.

The Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) is an organization founded in 2011 which brings lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer identifying emerging artists to Fire Island, a place long-steeped in LGBTQ history, to create, commune, and contribute to the location's rich artistic history. FIAR provides free live/work space to five selected artist residents who work, research, relax, and immerse themselves in the Fire Island community, during which time they are visited by a handful of renowned visiting artists, curators, and art professionals who commune with residents through intimate visits, dinners, and discussions, providing support and feedback.

Positive Women’s Network – USA is a national membership body of women living with HIV and our allies that exists to strengthen the strategic power of all women living with HIV in the United States. Founded in 2008 by 28 diverse women leaders living with HIV, PWN-USA develops a leadership pipeline and policy agenda that applies a gender lens to the domestic HIV epidemic grounded in social justice and human rights.