2004 HOF Book2.Cdr

GLHF CHICAGO GAY AND LESBIAN HALL OF FAME 2004 City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations Richard M. Daley Clarence N. Wood Mayor Chair/Commissioner Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues William W. Greaves Laura A. Rissover Director/Community Liaison Chairperson COPIES OF THIS PUBLICATION ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues 740 North Sedgwick Street, 3rd Floor Chicago, Illinois 60610-3478 312.744.7911 (VOICE) 312.744.1088 (CTT/TDD) WWW.GLHallofFame.org © 2004 Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame 1 2 3 CHICAGO GAY AND LESBIAN HALL OF FAME The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame is both a historic event and an exhibit. Through the Hall of Fame, residents of Chicago and our country are made aware of the contributions of Chicago’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities and the communities’ efforts to eradicate bias and discrimination. With the support of the City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the Advisory Council on Gay and Lesbian Issues (now the Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues) established the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in June 1991. The inaugural induction ceremony took place during Pride Week at City Hall, hosted by Mayor Richard M. Daley. This was the first event of its kind in the country. The Hall of Fame recognizes the volunteer and professional achievements of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, their organizations, and their friends, as well as their contributions to the LGBT communities and to the city of Chicago. This is a unique tribute to dedicated persons and organizations whose services have improved the quality of life for all of Chicago’s citizens. The nominee must have made either (1) a single, far-reaching contribution or (2) significant long-term contributions to the quality of life of Chicago’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender communities or the city of Chicago. The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame is privately funded through generous donations from individuals, businesses, and organizations. Staff support is provided by the City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations, members of the Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and volunteers. The selection of inductees for the Hall of Fame is made by former recipients of the award based on nominations from the general public. Planning is under way for a permanent location for the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame display. 4 2004 PLANNING COMMITTEE CHICAGO GAY AND LESBIAN HALL OF FAME Gary G. Chichester Chairperson Thom Dombkowski William W. Greaves Philip Hannema Chuck Hyde William B. Kelley Danny Kopelson Selection Subcommittee Co-Chairperson Dean Ogren Norman L. Sandfield Adrian Williams Yvonne Zipter Selection Subcommittee Co-Chairperson 5 2004 INDUCTEES CHICAGO GAY AND LESBIAN HALL OF FAME Roger Brown Christopher Clason Charles Clifton Frank Galati Ralph Paul Gernhardt Suzanne Marie Kraus Julio Rodriguez Nan Schaffer, D.V.M. Terri Worman PFLAG/Chicago Friend of the Community Lincoln Park Lagooners Mulryan and York, Attorneys at Law 6 ROGER BROWN [deceased] oger Brown achieved international recognition for innovations in American Rart. He developed a unique way of portraying and pointedly commenting on urban infrastructure, social issues, nature, history, and events both personal and societal. Born in 1941 in Hamilton, Alabama, James Roger Brown came to Chicago in 1962 to study at the American Academy of Art and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He finished a commercial design program at the Academy in 1964, then studied fine art for four years at the School, which granted him a bachelor’s degree in 1968 and a master’s in 1970. He then received a fellowship to travel through Europe and Egypt, where he began to collect objects and images that helped to make travel one of the recurring themes of his work. Brown was a leader in the emerging movement known as Chicago Imagism, characterized not only by its artists’ own narrative, communicative originality but by the relations between their works and the objects that they collected and that surrounded them. Brown was also influenced by other ethnicities, self-taught artists, popular culture, politics, and religion. By 1972 Brown gained inclusion in Franz Schulze’s book on Chicago art since 1945, Fantastic Images. Brown’s relationship with architect George Veronda also began in 1972. Later, both architecture and landscape figured distinctively and prominently in Brown’s work, which traversed painting; printmaking; sculpture of found, painted, and assembled objects; stage sets; and mosaic murals (such as those over the entrance at 100 North LaSalle Street and at Howard Brown Health Center). For 27 years he was represented by Chicago’s Phyllis Kind Gallery, and his art has been exhibited nationally and abroad. In 1979, Brown designed sets for a Chicago Opera Theater production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, In that year he also began work on a residence and studio in New Buffalo, Michigan, which Veronda designed. Veronda died of lung cancer in 1984, but Brown continued to live in the Michigan residence while also maintaining his earlier home and studio in a Victorian storefront building at 1926 North Halsted Street. He eventually moved to La Conchita, California. Brown died in 1997 just short of his 56th birthday. He was buried in Opelika, Alabama, and a cenotaph for him is next to Veronda’s grave in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery. Before and after death, Brown gave the School of the Art Institute of Chicago his Michigan residence and studio, which serves as an artist’s retreat for faculty and staff; his collection of art, books, and archival materials, which inspired him and now is open to the public as a study collection in the Halsted Street building; and his California home and collection. He also gave the school many of his own paintings and prints in addition to the copyright on all his works. Brown was both an amateur genealogist and a believer in leaving a legacy to future generations. Of his kaleidoscopic collection and its donation, Brown wrote: “I feel the things in the collection are of universal appeal to all artists and people with a sense of the spiritual & mystical nature that material things can evoke.” His visions as a Chicago artist have had worldwide appeal. 7 CHRISTOPHER CLASON [posthumous] or several years in the 1970s and 1980s, Chris Clason was a talented, entertaining Ffigure as a singer-comic on local stages. He was also an Actors Equity member and worked onstage and backstage in community theater, children’s theater, and professional dinner theater as well as modeling. He had several other jobs in restaurants, catering, even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But Clason is best remembered as the chief founder of Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN), which in his nonbureaucratic, visionary, and proactive way he established in 1987 on the basis of responses to an ad he had placed in Gay Chicago Magazine. He then served as its first executive director for two years. TPAN was the first support network organized to reach out to all people who have tested positive for HIV, providing a combination of information and moral support. After his TPAN tenure, Clason moved to Howard Brown Memorial Clinic (now Health Center), where he served as education manager for nine months. Clason was also a three-year member of the WTTW community advisory board and a member of city and state AIDS advisory councils. He organized “The Word Is Thanks,” a fund-raiser in response to WTTW’s presentation of the historical documentary Word Is Out. Born in 1953 in Detroit, Clason graduated from Kimball High School in Royal Oak, Michigan, and completed two years as a theater major at Eastern Michigan University before moving to Chicago in 1972. In March 1990, in declining health, he moved to his parents’ home in Oklahoma City. In Oklahoma, he sang in a gay chorus, took part in a bowling league, and helped plan the yearly gay and lesbian parade. He was also a speaker for the Regional AIDS Interfaith Network in Oklahoma City, where he died at age 38 in 1991 from complications of HIV infection. Looking back in 1990 on his activist career during an interview with Bob Hultz, he characteristically spoke in favor of trying to maintain perspective as well as optimism: “I think our best focus for [TPAN] is to listen to the membership, to hear what people say. Look and see what draws people in, what satisfies them and provide that. When everything about your life is attached to HIV and AIDS, it’s like wearing yellow sunglasses all the time. Your world starts to get colored. But there are other colors in the rainbow. “Death and dying issues are major issues; we have all had to deal with the death of more friends and acquaintances than any of our parents. My parents are in their late 70s but they have not been exposed to the kind of death that I’ve been exposed to. It will not be the same for generations after us. It will be better and it will be worse. Just try to maintain the flexibility to handle whatever is coming up. I think death and dying is an important issue, but I think health and living is a very important issue; both deserve equal focus, if not a little extra on health and living issues.” 8 CHARLES CLIFTON [posthumous] harles E. Clifton made significant contributions as a health advocate for Cnearly 15 years before his death at age 45 on August 15, 2004.

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