+34
A woman named Leah Shirley, who was 10 when her uncle David McLemore passed away from AIDS in 1997, discovered his quilt panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt displayed at First Austin Church in Austin. The panel served as a catalyst for her to create a new art show, 'Observers of Beautiful Forms,' inspired by her uncle's memory and her own healing journey.
Austin artist reunites with uncle’s AIDS Quilt panel, turns grief into a new art show I felt like I was looking at him.
He was there. He was present. McLemore had died in December 1997 from complications related to AIDS. He was 40 years old.
Shirley was 10. Nearly three decades later, standing inside a church in downtown Austin, she felt as though she had unexpectedly found him again. Visitors explore the AIDS Memorial Quilt at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025. The exhibition honored more than 270 people lost to HIV and AIDS and reconnected families with loved ones remembered in the fabric.
Then she stopped speaking for a moment. Austin artist reunites with uncle’s AIDS Quilt panel, turns grief into a new art show What Shirley discovered that afternoon was more than her uncle's quilt panel. She found a version of herself she had almost forgotten. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025, featuring 34 quilt blocks memorializing more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS.
Months after McLemore's death, Shirley's family had helped create his quilt panel for the National AIDS Memorial Quilt.
"I said David will always be with me," she recalled recently. He was always someone I could look up to. He had a good sense of humor about things and just enjoyed life while he could. The words felt less like something remembered than something discovered.
Austin artist reunites with uncle’s AIDS Quilt panel, turns grief into a new art show Visitors explore the AIDS Memorial Quilt at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025. The exhibition honored more than 270 people lost to HIV and AIDS and reconnected families with loved ones remembered in the fabric. David had been sick for most of her childhood.
He had been diagnosed with HIV before she was born and spent years navigating an illness that, at the time, still carried enormous fear and stigma. For nearly three decades, this brass kaleidoscope has connected Leah Shirley to her late uncle, David McLemore. Today, it inspires an exhibition born from remembrance and healing. He was so funny.
As a child, I just thought he was magical. It was never, 'That's my sick uncle.
' It was my Uncle David. Shirley remembers calling him to talk about episodes of "I Love Lucy" she had watched on Nick at Nite. He listened. He laughed.
He made time. Looking back now, she is struck by the fact that he knew his time was limited. Unlike a cemetery, it moves. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025, featuring 34 quilt blocks memorializing more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS.
Created in 1987 by activist Cleve Jones, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was designed as a public act of remembrance during the height of the AIDS crisis. Today it contains nearly 50,000 panels dedicated to more than 110,000 people. Families contribute photographs, clothing, favorite objects and handwritten messages. The AIDS Memorial Quilt transformed First Austin Church in Austin in 2025, displaying 34 blocks that honored more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS.
Last August, one of Texas' largest AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibitions in decades arrived in Austin, featuring 34 blocks memorializing more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS. Dave Anderson, a volunteer coordinator with Kind Clinic who spent years helping organize the exhibition, still finds himself talking to the panels. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025, featuring 34 quilt blocks memorializing more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS.
"There are times that as I walk through and turn on lights and things," he said, "that I'll just reach over and tell them, 'You are not forgotten. '" That promise sits at the heart of the quilt. But for Shirley, the exhibit did something unexpected. It transformed remembrance into conversation.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025, featuring 34 quilt blocks memorializing more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS. Later she called her mother, David's sister, and told her that the panel was in Austin. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed at First Austin Church in Austin in 2025, featuring 34 quilt blocks memorializing more than 270 lives lost to HIV and AIDS.
The experience reopened conversations that had been dormant for decades and set in motion something neither Shirley nor Anderson expected. He looked up her artwork online.
Then he wrote back. You should do a show here. The exhibition that emerged from that invitation opens this month at the same church where she found David's quilt panel. A brass kaleidoscope left to Austin artist Leah Shirley by her uncle, David McLemore, serves as the inspiration for her new exhibition, "Observers of Beautiful Forms.
" Called "Observers of Beautiful Forms," it takes its name from the Greek roots of the word kaleidoscope. Of all the objects she has carried through adulthood, it is the one that never left. The kaleidoscope requires light to work. It asks the viewer to look upward.
She now creates images through the kaleidoscope and prints them onto reflective aluminum surfaces that shimmer as viewers move around them.
"It feels like we're collaborating because I'm using this tool that he gave me that has been this point of our connection," she said. Then she answered her own question. It has to do with time. Because somewhere between the child who signed a quilt panel in 1998 and the artist who discovered it again nearly 30 years later, grief had simply been waiting.
"Observers of Beautiful Forms" opens June 13 at First Austin Church in downtown Austin. An opening reception begins at 3 p.m., and the exhibition will remain on view throughout the summer. Shirley will attend the opening and speak with visitors about the work, the quilt, and the uncle whose memory inspired both. Central Texas roofs take a beating.
Between the spring hail season, the straight-line winds that roll in from West Texas thunderstorms, and the falling limbs frWilliamson County emergency officials issued a shelter-in-place order Wednesday for residents near Maritime Way and South Great Oaks Drive in Round Rock due toWe've traded in our cool and rainy weather for a hot and muggy week in Central Texas. Voluntarily or not, this is where we are.
That being said, there are someAustin police released body camera footage and identified seven officers placed on administrative leave following the death of a 32-year-old man who was Tased during an arrest in North Austin on Saturday.
Scratch the next story
AIDS Memorial Quilt David Mclemore Leah Shirley Healing Journey Art Show
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Austin FC launches free World Cup watch parties across Central Texas this summerWhere to watch the World Cup in Austin: Austin FC announces free events
Read more »
'Whalefall' Movie Trailer: Austin Abrams Gets Stuck In A Whale StomachThe trailer for 20th Century's 'Whalefall' is here, teasing the fraught father-son story in which Austin Abrams' diver gets swallowed by a whale.
Read more »
‘Wolfs’ Breakout Austin Abrams To Star In ‘Whalefall’ From 20th Century, Imagine And Brian DuffieldAustin Abrams is set to star in 'Whalefall' for 20th Century.
Read more »
Dangerous blue-green algae emerging in Austin lakes for another yearToxic cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can poison people and has killed several pet dogs since it established itself in Austin lakes in 2019.
Read more »