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Artful Advocacy
Student-led campaign brings an outpouring of support for those with AIDS
When Sarah Tiedeman came to
Seattle Pacific University in
2003, she already had a heart
for the global AIDS crisis.
“Even before my freshman year, I knew two
people who had died of the disease,” she says.
Now an international studies major who will
be a senior next fall, Tiedeman directed
reVISION, a community art project held in
May 2006 and designed to help students and
others examine their perceptions of AIDS.
The three-part event — which resulted in
a colorful mosaic for display throughout the
Seattle area — was sponsored by the studentled
organization Acting on AIDS (AoA),
founded in 2003 by Seattle Pacific students
Lisa Krohn ’04, James Pedrick ’04, and Jackie
Yoshimura ’04. AoA has since launched chapters
on 55 college and university campuses
across the nation.
Tiedeman served as event coordinator for
SPU’s AoA chapter in 2005–06. During her
sophomore year, she had researched how
women in South Africa use art as a response
to the HIV/AIDS crisis and as a means of
survival. She also studied how art can be used
to initiate conversations about the stigmas
associated with AIDS. As a result, she hoped
to do something similar on the Seattle Pacific
campus, and reVISION was born.
Free and open to the public, reVISION
brought students and Seattle community
members together to paint ceramic tiles for the
mosaic and to examine the church’s response
to AIDS. Art, says Tiedeman, is a “natural
means for conversation, especially when words
aren’t adequate or appropriate.” The finished
project, complete with 81 tiles, was unveiled in
a ceremony on May 30, 2006, at First Free
Methodist Church’s Fine Center.
Before launching reVISION, Tiedeman,
who mentors an HIV-positive high school
student, was concerned that many of her fellow
Seattle Pacific students had little awareness
about the disease. “Most of the students
who participated in the project,” she says, “had
never met anyone with AIDS or HIV.”
Tiedeman invited people from local AIDS
organizations, both patients and staff, to take
part in reVISION. “It was amazing to see
SPU students getting to know, and in some
cases becoming friends with, people with
HIV and AIDS,” she says.
Seattle Pacific senior and project participant
Kyle Igarashi says the experience changed
his perception of AIDS: “I realized this was
not a problem to be solved, but rather people
in need of help, love, and company.” Igarashi
painted his tile all red with a small white door
slightly open. “It represented hope,” he
explains. “It’s there — but it’s off in the distance.
We have to work for it.”
Tiedeman and other volunteers plan to
take the mosaic, now on display in the SPU
Library, on the road to other venues in
the Seattle area. “We hope the mosaic can
become a means for awareness, not just about
AIDS as a one-dimensional issue,” she says,
“but about AIDS as a local issue, one that
affects real people who deserve love, compassion,
and grace.”
— BY LINDSEY BICKEL
— PHOTO BY JOHN KEATLEY
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