Preface

During the summer of 1996, Vancouver, B.C., was the site of an International Conference on AIDS. From all the various media reports it was a resounding success. Visitors to the Conference arrived by the thousands and hotel rooms were simply unavailable. All the main thoroughfares in the downtown area were festooned with colorful banners. The ringing cash registers of the restaurants and retail establishments in the downtown core, and the glowing reports in the media was music to the commercial sector. It was an exciting week for all who participated. There was a protest parade before the opening. Act Up arrived and acted up. Jean Chretien, our Prime Minister, apparently felt it impolitic to appear to open a Conference about a "fag" disease. To the delight of all the AIDS infected and affected attendees, he consequently had his ass chewed out for both his failure to appear and his lack of leadership in developing a "National AIDS Policy" by no less than Elizabeth Taylor, bless her heart. His lackluster subordinate, the Minister of Health, was soundly booed from the podium and a great time was had by all. But in the now eleven plus years that have passed, nothing has changed.

One of the central activities of the Conference was an Art Exhibit with AIDS as its focus. It was located in a lower forum at Robson Square in downtown Vancouver and it was beautiful. It contained, for local content and interest, the work of three B.C. artists. One was the noted Joe Average who had designed the Conference Logo. Another was another not known to me but who, like Joe Average, had a considerable biograph beneath his name. The third was the work of an unknown artist with no biograph.

His paintings were mounted together at the front of the room directly below a large overhead quilt that stretched completely across the ceiling from one end of the hall to the other. Each of the small panels from which it was constructed listed the name of an AIDS victim from one small African village and the panels were manifold. The rest of the exhibits, beautiful in execution, graphic in their impact, and tragic in their subject matter, stretched around the hall in a seemingly endless parade of faceless names and nameless faces.

The work of this third B.C. artist, as displayed, was a large pencil self-portrait of the artist at the age of eighteen that was superb. It was accompanied by two others, a raging abstract- "My Fear of the AIDS Virus", and another collage entitled " The Impossible Today, The Miracles Tomorrow". This work on display was the only one that linked a face with a name. Under the large self-portrait was a small label reading:

Lee Barrett

1964-1996

Of all the thousands of curious enquiring minds that visited and viewed the exhibition during the week no one ever followed up on this singular anomaly. No one asked "Who was he?", "Where did he come from?", "Did he do any other work?", "How did he die?". If anyone did ask they could get no answers, for The Organizing or Selection people had no idea who he was before they selected three out of the forty-three works he left when he died.

In addition to his paintings and drawings, he left nearly fifty volumes of his daily journal chronicling his life and thoughts from 1982 onwards. These, he left to me, his father, with the stipulation that I read them. I have done so, and have gained an understanding and respect from that reading that I will forever treasure.

His life was a tragedy. He never fit. As a child, as a youth, as a student, as an artist, as a homosexual, as a patient- he never fit. His was a life of pain, of egocentricity, of depressions and euphoria's that culminated in a disgusting failure of the Medical, Mental Health, and Social Services in their efforts to help him. He fell through every crack in the system and he died in poverty in a Hospice in the downtown East Hastings area of Vancouver.

He deserved better.