featured gallery for May 2004

Gesture By Gesture

First of all, I would like to say that I am deeply honored to have been asked to curate an exhibition for Visual AIDS. I wanted to write something very poignant ... but then I realized that I couldn't match in words the poignancy of the work of the artists David Abbott, Tara Popick, Stephen Varble and Hugh Steers. I feel the quote below reflects how I feel about what truly matters at the end of the day:

"Success? ... Well, I don't know quite what you mean by success. Material success? Worldly success? Personal, emotional success? The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it. I call people successful not because they have money or their business is doing well but because, as human beings, they have a fully developed sense of being alive and engaged in a lifetime task of collaboration with other human beings -- their mothers and fathers, their family, their friends, their loved ones, the friends who are dying, the friends who are being born. Success? ... Don't you know it is all about being able to extend love to people? Really. Not in a big capital-letter sense but in the everyday. Little by little, task by task, gesture by gesture, word by word." -- Ralph Fiennes

I want to dedicate this exhibition in the memory of my friend and fellow Buddhist Ned Morgan who died last fall at the age of 39. He had HIV for 20 years. Ned was an extraordinary man who dedicated his life to helping people. He had the courage and the strength to always give from his heart. I will always be inspired by his spirit and aspire to live my life the way he did his.

Visual AIDS has a very impressive archive of exceptional artwork and I encourage people to familiarize themselves with it. I would like to thank Amy Sadao and Nelson Santos for their help on this project and for their dedication and commitment to helping artists with HIV and AIDS.