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Medicine Wheel Installation & 24-hour Vigil Returns to BCA Cyclorama
15th Annual Installation to honor World AIDS Day, as part of BCA Cultural Partners Series
Media & VIP Preview, Tuesday, November 28, 6:00-8:00 PM
BOSTON—(October 24, 2006) Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) and Medicine Wheel Productions, Inc. will co-present Medicine Wheel for its 15th year from November 27-December 3, with a 24-hour vigil on December 1, at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street, South End. Medicine Wheel is part of the BCA’s 2006-2007 Cultural Partners Series. The BCA selects innovative artists and arts organizations to present special seasonal and one-time events or installations with accompanying workshops, artist talks and panel discussions for the arts-interested public. The 2006/07 series includes Access to Theater, Coming Up for Air: An AutoJAZZography, Medicine Wheel, Bread and Puppet Theater and Snappy Dance Theater.
Medicine Wheel is an epic work of art created by Michael Dowling, Artistic Director of Medicine Wheel Productions. The primary visual component is the wheel itself: thirty-six pedestals and portable shrines arranged in a circle. Designed in response to the dramatic circular space of the Cyclorama, Medicine Wheel commands this grand interior with understated power.
Dowling developed Medicine Wheel to be a part of A Day Without Art, the visual arts community’s annual response to the AIDS crisis that flowered in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s in New York City and other artistic centers. While most activities associated with A Day Without Art no longer take place, Medicine Wheel has grown in importance as Boston’s largest annual observation of World AIDS Day. Each year the installation is based around a different element: fire, water, earth or air. This 15th incarnation of the Medicine Wheel is a fire year and will focus on the history of the epidemic and the experience of youth who have grown up during it.
The Medicine Wheel Vigil is true public art; the community is involved as participants and co-creators. This year, youth from around the city, hosted by the Medicine Wheel Youth Group, are creating a visual epic poem reflecting their stories and knowledge of growing up during the epidemic. Thousands of their red paper hand prints will be sewn together into a quilt and their beliefs about the epidemic, factual and mythical, will be recorded in hand bound books, all of which will be incorporated into the installation. The Medicine Wheel group will host a youth forum on AIDS/HIV on Thursday November 30th from 3-6 p.m.
To receive a kit for your youth group or youth organization to take part in this project, call (617) 268-6700 or email Michael Dowling. Light artist John Powell will project their words on the exterior of the BCA and on the Wall of Hands inside the cyclorama.
Dozens of artists from around the city, including soprano Nancy Armstrong and cellist Sam Ou, make offerings of their art during the vigil. In 2004, Bennett Dance Company and the Vox Concort gave a joint performance which Thomas Garvey of the South End News described as “a true synthesis of the different arts...a rare fusion of sight, sound, and space through which the installation came suddenly, deeply alive.”
Adds Libbie Shufro, President and CEO of the Boston Center for the Arts, “We are so pleased to welcome one of the BCA’s Arts Champions Michael Dowling and co-present Medicine Wheel. The artistic quality of this work, and the spirit of community connections around loss and remembrance remains a powerful opportunity to utilize the arts for social value.”
Medicine Wheel’s 2006 vigil takes place during the twenty-four hours of Friday, December 1st, beginning at midnight Thursday and concluding at midnight Friday.
An offering of song, poetry, and dance will mark every hour of the vigil, and various rituals rooted in fire. Contributors include: Reverend Daniel Smith; Michael Brown, Ph. D.; vocalists Nancy Armstrong, Marshall Hughes, and Oen Kennedy; musicians Matt Samolis and Sam Ou; and KinoDance and Bennett Dance Company. A range of spiritual and faith traditions will be represented in Medicine Wheel’s vigil, including the Pagan community (led by Bruce Baldwin), Jewish, Christian, Native American, and others.
As in years past, all are invited to leave personal mementos such as jewelry, letters, poems, photos and other items in Medicine Wheel. Objects left are placed within the Wheel’s pedestals at the conclusion of the vigil, joining those left in previous years.
Medicine Wheel will be open to the public Monday, November 27 through Thursday, November 30, 9 am and 5 pm. On Thursday, November 30th the Medicine Wheel Youth Program will host a youth summit within the installation at 3 p.m. The annual 24-hour vigil takes place from 12:01 a.m. on Friday, December 1 and concluding at midnight on the 1st. A media preview will take place Tuesday, November 28th from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm.
Editor’s Note:
About Medicine Wheel Productions
The mission of Medicine Wheel Productions is to explore the human partnership with art through the ritual of involving communities in the creation of public art. All of our projects give voice to communities, to artists, and to youth through making public art. Medicine Wheel Productions brings diverse people together to create high quality sustainable projects, offering them meaningful experiences in their lives that are made manifest in the artwork left behind.
About Boston Center for the Arts
Celebrating its 36th anniversary, the BCA is an urban, cultural village, incubating and showcasing performing and visual artists through the art of our times. Occupying a city block in the historic South End, the BCA provides Greater Boston a creative “home” for more than 130 working artists, a welcoming, arts destination for more than 200,000 audience members each year, and an arts connection for youth and community.
Boston Center for the Arts: Rob Watson, 617-426-1522
Medicine Wheel Productions: Michael Dowling, (617) 268-6700
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