New York artist Eric Rhein discussed how his artistic expression and own existence have been affected by AIDS at the Brunnier Gallery Monday night.

Rhine showed slides of his artwork to an audience of 210 people, explaining how his work has been influenced and inspired by the disease since learning he was HIV positive 10 years ago.

Before beginning the slide presentation, Rhein asked members of the audience who knew a person with AIDS to raise their hands.

In response to the multitude of raised hands, Rhein said, “I had not thought AIDS had touched the Midwest as much as it obviously had. For those of you who did not raise your hands — you now know someone living with AIDS.”

Rhein’s slides displayed numerous works of painting, sculpture and jewelry making, as well as photographs.

“So much of my work comes from an unconscious place,” Rhein said. “Creativity in its purest form comes from other places, channels that will work through you if you get out of the way.”

While showing slides of various sculptures he has created, Rhein told of an inspiring experience that came shortly after discovering he was HIV positive.

Rhein said he visited a trance channeler, somewhat warily searching for “clues to navigate,” for what meaning the experience could have in his life.

“He said I was a sculpture in a past lifetime,” Rhein said.

Reincarnation is also the subject of a major piece of artwork Rhein created when he began the process of dealing with HIV.

While saying he does not always know why his work manifests itself in the way it often does, Rhein described the reincarnation piece as “very expressive, bringing cross-cultural associations of different lifetimes together.”

Rhein recalled a major conflict in 1989, as fear of others discovering he was HIV positive conflicted with the fact his work was being greatly influenced by the virus at the time.

“I was afraid to share [the artwork] for fear of the responses,” he said.

The spirit of Rhein’s deceased grandmother serves as a continuous guide in his life.

Rhine said her presence was especially prominent during his early stages of dealing with HIV, “when I was asking ‘who am I and why do I have this virus inside me?'”

The spiritual presence of his grandmother “helped me learn to grow, to dive inside and turn it into the most positive experience it could be in the face of something quite tragic,” he said.

A turning point in Rhein’s life came in 1996 when he began taking protease inhibitors to battle the virus as part of a medical study.

At the same time, Rhein was invited to begin a residency at The McDowell Colony.

While at the colony, Rhein said he experienced “a state of rebirth.”

“I was filled with an overwhelming sense of nature and gratitude to be alive and well, whereas I had lost hope eight months before,” he said.

At the colony, Rhein said he found the courage to share the reality of his HIV with others.

“I was [at the colony] in a state of health, and I had the chance to share being reborn or not,” he said. “It is best not to use [AIDS] to separate from others but rather for inclusion.”

A recent major project for Rhein has involved using sculpture as a means to pay tribute to friends who have lost their lives to AIDS.

Rhein said he chose to sculpt leaves out of wire to represent the people he loved, as well as “loss and spiritual presence and humans’ relationship to nature.”

His leaf project involves collecting distinct individual leaves that remind him of friends killed by AIDS and then sculpting the wire into the shape of the leaves.

Rhein continuously works on the leaf project and has now created more than 120 leaf tributes.

Also included in the presentation were portraits and sculptures inspired by Rhein’s past lovers, which he said represent “a grandeur of sexuality to celebrate.”

“One does not stop being a sexual being when they test positive,” he said.

Rhein’s most recent project is a series in which he takes pages of medical text books and merges them with wire sculptures of birds, leaves and guardians angels.

“Combining spirituality and science,” he said, “offers a much fuller sense of the human experience.”