Miami Herald - Wednesday, December 10, 1997
Johnny Diaz, Herald Staff Writer

Nearby, Denny is on his deathbed, his eyes as wide as a scared deer's.

Some are gaunt and frowning. Eyes that cringe in pain. Others have chins held high, like their spirits.

They are AIDS patients whose emotions, heart and soul have been captured on canvas by Dr. Wilma B. Siegel, a retired oncologist and Fort Lauderdale artist. Her series, called Faces of AIDS , is being exhibited at Florida International University's University Park campus in Miami-Dade through Dec. 30. All 15 faces are also woven onto a quilt hanging at the school.

Some of the subjects are dying of AIDS. Others have died.

But their spirit lives on through Siegel's art, which she calls a channel for AIDS awareness.

Greater Miami has the nation's second-highest rate of AIDS cases among adults. And Florida has the second-highest rate among children.

"I really have compassion for these people. I want the world to have compassion," Siegel said Tuesday. "I don't want people to forget them."

From a young age, Siegel knew she wanted to help others. She knew it would either be through art or medicine.

So she did both, at first concentrating on one passion more than the other.

She worked almost 20 years as an oncologist and educator at Montefiore Hospital and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She also served as medical director of the Ritter Scheurer Hospice at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx.

There she dealt with terminally ill cancer and AIDS patients. She learned to understand their pain by reading their faces.

"Their eyes tell you what is underneath the surface," Siegel said.

It is that skill, understanding and capturing the human spirit, she brings to her art.

"Commitment, creativity and compassion, that's what I did in medicine and in art," she says, glancing at the bright olive eyes of her latest portrait, Heidi, who has HIV.

After retiring from her medical career in 1990, Siegel turned to her art full time.

"I was going to utilize my skills to help make people feel better about themselves," Siegel said. "I wanted to help restore their dignity."

She found AIDS patients to paint at the the Hospice of Broward County in Fort Lauderdale, the Robert Mapplethorpe Residential Treatment Facility in New York City and other patient facilities.

The 15 portraits at FIU reflect society. They are truckers and hairstylists, straight and gay, young and old, physically dying but emotionally alive.

Siegel's use of watercolors and vibrant hues -- mostly red, orange and peach -- combined with soft, light tones project an ethereal spirit, almost three-dimensional.

It's almost as if they're speaking to you.

"I'm in this for the message," Siegel says, pointing out that 70 percent of her portrait subjects have died.

Thanniel, an 18-month-old girl orphaned two months after her birth, died last year, five months after her portrait was painted.

"I want the message to get out. It can happen to anybody," she said.

CAPTION: color photo: Dr. Wilma B. Siegel in front of artwork

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