Oak leaves blanket a floor that holds coffins and ladders; a television plays only static; fragments of poetry are posted on the walls along with test tubes, wooden ears and illuminated plastic flowers. These objects may seem random, but each one of them has a very particular meaning to their creator, local artist Mike E. Walsh.
Walsh’s most recent exhibit, currently showing in the Adell McMillan Gallery, is a form of sculptural art referred to as a site specific installation. Entitled “Link,” Walsh’s exhibit is intended as a commentary on the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“I’m gay and I’ve seen a lot of my friends die of AIDS,” Walsh said. “Now I’m seeing that this is a topic that is being ignored by the media. It’s made me kind of an AIDS activist.”
Walsh has a long history with conceptual art pieces. After receiving a bachelor’s of fine arts from the University of Oregon in 1972, he began to tour the country with a piece entitled “Rope Chains,” in which he hung a series of ropes around a gallery that could be rearranged by the audience. Since then, he has put on a wide range of exhibitions at galleries and colleges across the country, as well as shows in Australia, Italy and Germany.

“Mike has become a really well known installation artist,” UO Cultural Forum Visual Arts Coordinator Linda Archuletta said. “He redid his entire installation in order to
fit into this gallery. He’s very accommodating.”
Though he had to rework the exhibit in order to make it fit within the glass cases of the Adell McMillan Gallery, Walsh said he didn’t have to change much in order to make it work.
But since each object has a particular symbolic meaning and the objects work together, accommodating the entire work to a limited space is not an easy task, he said.
“I was about to head to Egypt before this event, which meant I really had to work this out beforehand,” he said. “It was tough to work it all in.”
A variety of complex symbols work throughout the piece. One of these are the recurring images of the human body. These include disembodied ears and hands, as well as more subtle additions.
“There are groups of balls placed around the piece, 23 black and 23 white,” Walsh said. “They represent the two sets of chromosomes in the human genetic structure.”
Other objects in the piece address the subject of AIDS more directly.
“Near the front of the exhibit there is a box that contains 4,000 names of people who have died of AIDS,” Walsh said. “I’ve also written names of AIDS victims on oak leaves hanging on the walls. The idea there is that leaves are objects without identity, much like many victims of AIDS. I’ve given them an identity by putting names on them.”
Walsh says he hopes the exhibit will inform people that AIDS is still an important problem around the world. “I like how the piece commemorates the victims of AIDS,” post-bachelor student Vince Artman said. “Personally though, it’s not to my taste.”
The Adell McMillan Gallery is located in the EMU. There will be a reception for “Link” in the gallery at 5:30 p.m. tonight.