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Art with a message: Quilts on display in Ventura County remember local residents who died from AIDS

Mark Lager with the Quilt Project Gold Coast.
Lance Orozco
/
KCLU
Mark Lager with the Quilt Project Gold Coast.

The Quilt Project Gold Coast is also trying to show people that HIV and AIDS are still major health issues in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.

They are colorful quilts scattered around the walls of the Ventura County Government Center. But, they are much more than art. If you look at them, you see each has a name on it. These are memorials to people in Ventura and Santa Barbara County who died as a result of AIDS.

"Dominick Parisi, he was a part of AIDS Care, which was a local nonprofit. He was very big into doing parties, so you can see on the quilt that we have the champagne glasses, and the balloon. He was all about creating events," said Mark Lager, who is with Quilt Project Gold Coast. It's the nonprofit community group which helped create the quilts, and organized the display of nearly three dozen of them at the Government Center.

He gives another example of the quilts. "Next to him, David Dix was very much into trains, so we had an artist help us, and we created one (a quilt) with trains). All of these people (featured in the quilts) were from Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. I knew many of them," said Lager.

Lager said quilts were a part of a big national, and local HIV/AIDS awareness effort in the 1980’s.

After the availability of drugs made AIDS containable when it was caught early enough, the local effort was disbanded. But, a surge in HIV and AIDS numbers in recent years prompted a restart of the quilt project, which is meant to raise awareness of the issue.

"Our focus is on education of HIV and AIDS," said Lager. "We do that by creating quilt panels." They are displayed at community events, like a World AIDS day event at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Lager said it’s especially important to reach young people, who didn’t live through the AIDS crisis and might not take the danger it poses seriously.

When you walk into the main entrance of the Government Center, you see the quilts everywhere, on the walls of all three floors which are visible from the Central Lobby. While they look like artwork, and many have beautiful designs, Lager said each one is a memorial, and a remembrance to someone who lived here in our community.

The quilts will be on display at the Government Center into mid-January. The Quilt Project Gold Coast sponsors twice a month events where people can get help making their own quilt. You can also commission having a quilt being made to remember someone.

"The Quilt Project is the largest grass roots folk art project in the world, and we want people to see this, and not only see it as a piece of art, but that it also is part of the grieving process, and part of the remembrance of the fact that AIDS is still with us," said Lager.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.