Moving Forward with Awareness and Compassion, 1996-98

Moving Forward with Awareness and Compassion involved over 100 high school students from New School for the Arts in Scottsdale, AZ, in a collaborative project that examined cultural, political and emotional awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Students participated in developing an artistic vision to first recognize and then voice their personal relationship to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Sale created the project’s design and format, but gave the students the space necessary to process and develop ideas for their own contribution to the work. In preparing the project, students (ages 14 to 18) participated in an educational/research process, which included the viewing of various HIV/AIDS documentaries and artists’ videos and round table discussions with their instructors, a local doctor and an AIDS activist. The final installation included four collaborative artworks created in conjunction with groups of students in arts discipline-based courses of painting/drawing, sculpture, photography and poetry taught at the art-focused high school.

The collaborative project was presented at the ASU Art Museum, Tempe, AZ, and the Atrium Gallery, New School for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ, and at Museum of Contemporary Art, Ft Collins, CO with the support of an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist’s Project Grant.