Art a quarter-century after the AIDS epidemic: Ed Aulerich-Sugai and a reading by Robert Glück

Ed in his studio. Courtesy of the Estate of Ed Aulerich-Sugai.

San Francisco artist Ed Aulerich-Sugai died of AIDS in 1994. A quarter-century later, KunstWorks is working with the partners who survived him to honor his art and life. Aulerich-Sugai was an SFAI graduate and a gardener at the Conservatory of Flowers. In his work, his attention to bodily fragility and transience are balanced with his attention to the flourishing of life around him. Lovingly preserved, Ed's paintings and dreams, gardens and drawings are tenaciously present.

On September 22 at 6:00 pm, please join us at BAMPFA for a reading by the New Narrative writer Robert Glück, that includes excerpts about his life with Ed.

"Ed’s bequest to me was the hardest part. The two paintings from his ghost series have hung above my desk for twenty years now, the two ghosts my writing companions. I chose them because Ed and I watched horror films together. A skull invites thoughts on the brevity of life; this skull ponders the delicate horror of its naked bones: the unfolding hand is brutal sadness, the loss of flesh is a gesture, a skeleton spreading its fingers outward."

From About Ed by Robert Glück