Stop AIDS Project
art installation on display through May 30 in San
Francisco

To mark the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the global AIDS pandemic, San Francisco's Stop AIDS Project is holding a neighborhood-wide public-art installation focusing on the epidemic through May 30 in the Castro section of the city. The installation, titled "Promise for the Future: Marking 25 Years of HIV/AIDS," is centered around the visual theme of an iris flower and includes more than 20 businesses in the Castro neighborhood, a 43-foot interactive message wall, and hundreds of live and fabricated iris flowers. The message wall is located at 18th and Castro streets. People are encouraged to attach notes and messages to the wall to honor family and friends lost to the disease as well as share plans for the future, remembrances of the past 25 years of the pandemic, and messages of recommitting to fight the spread of HIV. Other elements of the installation include 90 fabricated iris flowers appearing underneath business awnings, and large fabricated iris flowers that illuminate at night attached to 12 lampposts along Castro Street. A community forum will be held after the exhibit's conclusion on June 1 at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, 100 Collingwood St. For more information go online to www.stopaids.org.