User:Desertsourness/Ed Aulerich-Sugai

Ed Aulerich-Sugai (1950-1994) was an Asian-American artist, writer, gardener, and AIDS activist. A figurative painter, his work draws inspiration from traditional Japanese mythology and iconography. Frequently, his work portrays botanical and anatomical subjects such as cellular biology or flora and fauna as in his depictions of samurai masks and helmets. His artwork produced from 1987–1994 documents his seven-year experience of living with AIDS and includes journals, paintings, and works on paper. Aulerich-Sugai died of complications related to AIDS in 1994.

Education and career
Aulerich-Sugai was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother was Japanese-American. When Aulerich-Sugai was a child, the family, including his three siblings, moved to Tacoma, Washington. In 1970, after graduating from Tacoma Community College, Aulerich-Sugai moved to San Francisco and enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute, then at the center of experimental art practices and a queer bohemian community. The faculty at the time included Kathy Acker, George Kuchar, and Jay DeFeo. In 1974, Aulerich-Sugai received a BFA in painting.

Aulerich-Sugai exhibited at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, New Langton Arts, the Asian Art Museum, and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, among other Bay Area institutions.

HIV/AIDS
In 1987, Aulerich-Sugai was diagnosed with HIV. The next seven years were the most generative in his career. He produced nearly 300 paintings and drawings during this time period. “The painting became a way for me to examine my illness, deal with my anger and fear and a way to focus on healing and fighting the disease,” Aulerich-Sugai wrote. Aulerich-Sugai was one of the first beneficiaries of Visual AIDS, a support organization for artists with HIV infection. He often spoke and wrote about his experience of living with AIDS.

In the last seven years of his life, Aulerich-Sugai created several series of paintings focused on HIV. They include abstract enlargements of cells in mitosis influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, fantasies of Japanese samurai masks and helmets that he described as “visual mantras,” and an illustrated autobiographical children’s book about a boy with cancer.

In addition to maintaining a studio and exhibiting, Aulerich-Sugai was an award-winning gardener at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. His artwork often refers to the techniques of botanical illustration.

His works appear in numerous publications, including A Hundred Legends, OUT/LOOK National Lesbian & Gay Quarterly Magazine , Gay Sunshine: A Journal of Gay Liberation  , Angels of the Lyre , Andy , and Zinc. In 1989 he was interviewed by Spalding Gray in the live conversation performance, “Talking about Living with AIDS.”

Legacy
Aulerich-Sugai's extensive diaries and dream journals are the basis of short stories and books by Robert Glück, a New Narrative movement co-founder and the artist's partner in the 1970s. The artist's paintings, archive, studio, and garden have been preserved by his partner Daniel Ostrow at the Ed Aulerich-Sugai Collection and Archive. Aulerich-Sugai’s work is included in the Berkeley Art Museum collection and his paintings were included in the exhibition Way Bay at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2018.

Aulerich-Sugai is inurned in the San Francisco Columbarium, in a tomb he designed himself.