Interview: Ken Wampler
What excites you about NYCAM’s mission?
That it helps us remember the people we lost and the people who responded, because if we don’t remember, it will be like it didn’t happen. All of us should be proud of the way we responded. I remember when I was working in ’85 at the AIDS Resource Center(now Bailey House), I went up to see a client at Metropolitan Hospital. He was so immune-compromised that he had warts all over his face. He was terribly, terribly sick. I walked into his room and found him lying naked on a bare mattress. I ran into the hall and screamed over and over, “My client has no sheets!!!” until there was a flock of nurses making his bed. That’s one of the many images I have of that time. You couldn’t see that and not force a response.
Tell us a little about your history with the epidemic.
I had a free-lance decorative painting business, when people started to get sick and die. Spending my time painting extravagantly expensive pillows seemed meaningless, and I began volunteering at AIDS Resource Center. I quickly gave up my business, started working full-time at ARC, and my life permanently changed.
Who or what will you be remembering at the memorial?
I will be remembering lots and lots of people, but mostly one of my closest friends, Fred Prince, whose death left a Fred-shaped hole in my world that will never be filled.
Why did you found The Alpha Workshops?
When I worked at ARC, I could see what people did with their apartments and that there were a lot of creative people living with AIDS. Their creative identities were being eclipsed by their status as a PWA, a person living with an illness. I wanted to make a place where people could be identified by their creativity, in spite of their illness.
How have the needs of people living with HIV changed since you founded Alpha, and how are they the same?
Since I founded Alpha, the drug cocktail has come along. That changed things a lot; the expectations that people could reasonably have. It supported the idea that people with HIV would be able to re-focus their energies, that working while positive was going to become the norm. I know people still feel stigma, but now people have the ability to not disclose their diagnosis, which seemed far less possible years ago, with opportunistic infections still so frequent.
How is Alpha Workshops making a difference?
Alpha’s impact on an individual has the potential to be major. Our motto is, “creating beauty, changing lives.” We provide very in-depth training and the enthusiasm and appreciation for making beautiful things. Our students change their own lives, but we provide the place, the supplies and the training for it to happen. They really can shift into a new career, a new life, by coming here.
Tell us a little more about Alpha Workshops.
Near the end of our second decade, we’re delighted to have recently moved into a brand new 5,500 sq. ft. School and Studio on West 29th Street. We’re proud of the hundreds of students who have graduated from our ten-week and our 26-week training programs.Some of them work in our Studio with New York’s top interior designers and architects, who by buying our products and using our services employ creative people living with HIV. For Designers and Architects, The Alpha Workshops is the pre-eminent resource for the highest quality decorative finishes and wall-coverings, all crafted by the skilled hands of our artisans.
When you hire Alpha for decorative finishes and wallpapers, you are not only creating beauty. You’re changing lives. Alpha is the only non-profit in the U.S. devoted to retraining people living with HIV/AIDS in the decorative arts field. Our Studios make fine finishes for furniture and walls, site-specific artwork and gorgeous hand-painted wallpaper.