On October 15, 2009, with the support of The Durst Organization, the Lobby gallery at the Conde Nast building in New York City's Times Square was the setting for an unusual art exhibition and live auction of famed artists to benefit the South Bronx based Health People which works with women and children affected by the AIDS epidemic. Health People has won world wide acclaim for its woman to woman and teen mentoring programs for families dealing with AIDS, cancer and other inner city killers. Indeed, founder Chris Norwood was one of the 100 Women of Peace nominated for an unprecedented Nobel Peace Prize last year. The exhibition culminated with a live auction and an awards ceremony honoring among others famed landscape painter April Gornik.

PBS NOW’s Maria Hinojosa emceed the evening. Television and theater producer Donny Epstein deftly handled the auction duties. Benefit Chair Larry B. Wright kept the event running smoothly while guests feasted on a lovely buffet from Saju Bistro.

Also honored were Julia Gruen, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation, Ed Martin, Director of International Insights at the Hershey Company and Director of Pause to Support a Cause, and Tomas Rivera, a graduate of Health People's Kids-Helping-Kids Mentoring Program who received the Youth Leadership Award.

“See the Children through the Trees” focused on the theme of trees and presented an intriguing range of work that conjures the many meanings---and absorbing images of nature. The idea is to see the children - some 53,000 orphaned by AIDS in New York - which the government has left behind. Works ranged from Gornik’s “The Woods” to Ross Bleckner’s abstracted leaves in “Early Every Morning”; from Milton Glaser’s blazing “Red Tree” to an original signed panel from Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury (which takes a sterner view toward trees) to Walter Channing’s 8 foot sculpture in which a natural tree trunk seems to “whirl” to the sky.

Other prominent artists participating included: Edwina Sandys, Jean Holabird, Steve Miller, Larry B. Wright, Michael Knigin, Cuca Romley, Joan Kraisky, Steve Maciw, Neke Carson, Christophe von Hohenberg, Suzanne Anker, Nick Patten, David Prentice, Michelle D’Oyley, Elizabeth Meyer, Cheryl Warwick, Susan Shatter, Steve Hudak, Alan Turner, Susan Hall, Bill Ciccariello, Matthew Hamblem, Carolina von Humboldt and Charles Yoder.
Also auctioned were unique celebrity "leaf" autographs from John Updike, Dolly Parton, Michael Bloomberg, Lauren Bacall, Carl Bernstein and other famed individuals.

Founded in 1990 by Norwood, the organization began as a women's HIV/AIDS peer education program teaching women most affected by the epidemic to become leaders in fighting the disease. Men soon asked to join Health People and urged by sick and dying parents to help their children Health People developed the groundbreaking Kids-Helping-Kids Mentoring Program which trains older teens with sick or missing parents to be mentors for younger children in the same difficult situations.