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Why do you think that quilt was such a successful magnet and attracting so much support and attention? Well, I think almost everybody who had been involved with the epidemic was feeling a deep sense of frustration at our inability to communicate to the rest of the world. What was going on here, particularly here in San Francisco, where so many people were affected so early on. And it was a terribly frustrating, isolating sort of experience. And I think that the quilt was the first thing that came [00:00:30] along that people really saw could communicate what we were experiencing beyond all of the boundaries of sexual orientation or geography. To your knowledge, is a quilt or a tapestry ever been used in this form before? Yes, there's a long tradition of quilting, uh, being used to express social causes. There was the piece quilt. Um, I didn't really get my inspiration from that, though. I think [00:01:00] my inspiration comes more from, uh, the Vietnam War Memorial and also Judy Chicago's Dinner party, which was an art piece where feminist artists contributed portions of it, and I like the the collaborative nature of it. But quilting has been used for a very long time to express social causes. And really, what we're trying to do with the quilt is to recapture the so called traditional American values, uh, for [00:01:30] this particular situation. And I think that the quilt evokes a very traditional American, uh, cultural response. How's the project now funded? I don't know. You'll have to talk to the people that run it now, Um, of a very high percentage of our income still comes from the sale of T shirts and buttons, video tapes, things like that. We remain a grassroots organisation. Uh, for almost all of our funding, [00:02:00] what's the basis for the orderly running of such a large project? Now? I don't know. OK, we'll move on then, then the names project seems to be active in about 24 or five states in the United States. What's happening in the rest of the states? The names project is is, uh, active everywhere and has had an impact everywhere. Um, I think we've been particularly effective in in reaching [00:02:30] people outside of the urban centres. I've I've done a lot of travelling to smaller towns and rural communities, and I just, for example, got back from a trip to northern New Hampshire. And, uh, later in the summer, I'm going to be coordinating a quilt display in Northern Michigan. And in communities like that, the quilt is always the the largest, uh, undertaking they've ever attempted in in terms of fund raising public education. Everywhere the quilt goes, it is displayed as the centrepiece for locally coordinated [00:03:00] fundraising and educational activities. How the quilt helped made gay and lesbian visibility Well, there are some who would say that the quilt is too passive, and we have been very clear from the beginning that we, as an organisation, do not have a specific political agenda. And from the very beginning we have been made up of heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals, all working together. So we are not a gay organisation, per se. But [00:03:30] I feel that anyone who walks through the quilt receive such a powerful message about the love and the solidarity of the gay and lesbian community. And I think that in this respect, the quilt is really actually quite subversive because on the surface level we're very respectable. We go into high schools and junior high schools. We're supported by establishment institutions. But when people come to see this AIDS education message. They also [00:04:00] learn a lot about about the gay and lesbian community. And I think one would have to be made of stone not to be moved by the love that is represented in the quilt the quilt has indeed, I know in many places brought together people in terms of, uh, the activities involved with them in terms of, uh, the sewing and the meeting of people and partners. And can you express any, uh, experiences you've had where people have been joined? The community has been strengthened by the group? Well, [00:04:30] I think one of the most, uh, wonderful things that happens is that, you know, there are many people represented in the quote with more than one panel. Usually what happens is when, particularly if they're gay people, a gay man will die of AIDS and his gay family, his lover and his friends will make a panel first. And then, typically a year later, the mom and dad and the brothers and sisters will come around, and then they will make a panel, and one of the things that we try to do is introduce these people to [00:05:00] each other so that they can share their different experiences of this person and their love for this person. I think that's very important for gay and lesbian people who still today feel so terribly isolated by this disease. It's very hard for those of us who are gay to keep sight of the fact that there are literally millions of people now all over the world who are also part of this struggle and they're not gay and they're not American. But they're part of us. And I think that the quilt expresses that beautifully, especially [00:05:30] now that we're getting more participation from around the world. Um, and the quilt projects that we've seen started in on other continents. Many people in Wellington, the city of New Zealand, I come from met the people who made the the the film the common threats film when they came to New Zealand. And, uh, the question back in my mind is, how easy has it been for people in the organisation to get hold of people like Dustin Homan, Robert Wagner to narrate and and front up those sorts of projects? [00:06:00] I would say that nothing we have done here has been easy, ever. And, uh, all of the people who work here work very hard at very low pay. We have received support from remarkable places and remarkable people, but nothing about it has been easy. Just a technical question now. And that is how do you arrange the orderly storage and transportation of such a monstrous art? Well, I think the uh, executive [00:06:30] director could give you a better handle of that, but basically the quilt is modular. The individual panels are sewn eight at a time into 12 ft by 12 ft squares. So it's very. It's relatively easy for us to do to stored. It folds up, and it's transported by people who are trained to coordinate the displays. We have a growing network of volunteers around the country who know how to display it and take care of it. And really, we've had [00:07:00] virtually no problems on that score, which still kind of amazes me. There were two individual panels that were lost early on in in the in the project, and I don't think we've lost any since then, and we've only had one, very minor, uh, experience with vandalism. So it's really perhaps give some advice to the United States Special Service with that experience. Well, I think we could give a lot more advice, but I'd rather give it to some different government agencies. [00:07:30] What message would you give to countries like to give to countries affected by AIDS, but yet to embark on the AIDS? Um project? What advice? Yes. What? What encouragement would you give them to? Well, I think that it it really depends on their country. We don't maintain that the quilt is the answer to every culture. Uh, the quilt works particularly well in countries that have a tradition of quilting in America. We tend to think of that as a as a particularly American art [00:08:00] form. In fact, it's not. And there are traditions of quilting that go back for centuries in Africa, for example. But the the the central notion of using artistic expression to help people resolve their grief and to connect them to the larger experience, I think is valid for any culture, any setting, any political system. Obviously, they've got to find out what works for their own particular situation. We have found, though, [00:08:30] with our international department Jeanette and Marcus Wagler that in most of the countries that they've gone to, they've ended up adopting something very similar to what we do. How do you feel as as the person that started this project as the person that first spray paint this friend's name onto piece? How how do you feel now? I have mixed feelings about the quilt. I'm very proud of it. [00:09:00] It's I wake up every day, still, four years later, with a sense of astonishment and wonder that an idea that started in my backyard has now involved so many millions of people and really touched millions of people. And that's very gratifying. And on the other hand, uh, I would have to say that the quilt has failed in what I had thought it would do. [00:09:30] And looking back now, it seems very naive. But I believed on October 11th, 1987 when we unfolded the quilt on the Capitol Mall for the first time in Washington, DC, I believed that the leaders of our country would see it would understand and would be moved and compelled to respond, and clearly that has not happened. So it's very frustrating as we enter the second decade of the HIV pandemic to recognise that [00:10:00] the fundamental issues of the epidemic still have not been addressed by the federal government. So I I'm proud of what we've done. The quilt works. The quilt helps people. It connects them, has it yet, or has anything yet been sufficient to move President Bush and the leaders of Congress? No.
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