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January 14, 2008
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Annually since
1992
The organization takes its name from this, its oldest and
largest project. Medicine Wheel is a sculptural installation
and vigil originated by Dowling in 1992 which uses art as
a ritua to promote healing. Held annually on December 1,
World AIDS Day, at the Boston Center for the Arts, Medicine
Wheel provides a safe place to gather and reflect for people
whose lives have been affected by AIDS and for all who wish
to visit this sacred space. Thousands of people energize
the circle of shrines by bringing religious or secular rituals,
personal offerings and celebrations, and gifts of music,
dance and poetry.
Click here for information about the 2007 Medicine Wheel. |
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Ongoing since 2006
The Medicine Wheel School offers adult classes in Advanced
Painting, Beginning/Intermediate Painting, Fresco Painting, Watercolor, Figure Drawing, Relief Printmaking, Site Specific Installation Art, Advanced Critique/Vision and Artist Retreats in New England, Tuscany and Ireland. |
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Ongoing since
1998
The Medicine Wheel Youth Program is a paid employment program
in South Boston for youth ages 14 to 18 in the Medicine
Wheel and No Man’s Land projects. Its main
goals are to create a sense of empowerment in the youth
through the pride and awareness that comes with generating
powerful, evocative works of art out of the major issues
in their lives; to present this work to the community; and
to challenge the often negative perceptions of the youths’
position, roles, and responsibilities in the community.
Now year-round, the program is notable building school to
community bridges by including students attending public
school in South Boston in the same group as those living
in the neighborhood but attending school elsewhere in the
city.
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Ongoing since
1996
The No Man’s Land project is an example of how
artists can expand their role in society by involving their
communities directly in the creation of public art and thereby
improve the quality of life in their neighborhood. Since
1996 Michael Dowling has led the South Boston Community
and especially its young people in the reclamation, through
gardens, sculpture, and pathways, of this once abandoned
weed lot behind South Boston High School. No Man’s
Land is the venue for the Summer Youth Program and for its
annual Community Day at the end of August, whose performances,
tours, and picnic draw the whole community together. Medicine
Wheel’s development spurred the creation of the High
School Outdoor Classroom’s, which was designed by Michael
Dowling in conjunction with his design for the Poetry
Path, the newest sculptural project on the site.
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In progress
The Poetry Path is a major component of the larger project
No Man’s Land behind South Boston High School.
The 1200 foot long path winds through the site, punctuated
by gathering places large and small, with poems to be engraved
on stone columns, cairns, and boulders. The participation
of the community, particularly local youth, is an important
part in both the construction and use of the path. Poetry
plays a large role in the youth program’s after-school
program, and provides a link to in-school classwork. The
goal of the project is to create a tranquil common space
that brings together the community at large and the school
population in an environment that is an active home for
artistic statements in the midst of the everyday life of
a community and its school.
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In progress
This project is an exploration through art of the rituals
and myths of death and dying, inviting people to a place
of spiritual awareness and communication with the unknown.
Undertaken in collaboration with Forest Hills Educational
Trust and Bennett Dance Company, its final incarnation will
be a sculptural installation and several performances on
and around Lake Hibiscus at Forest Hills Cemetery (Jamaica
Plain) in 2005. Christine Bennett and Michael Dowling have
collaborated on several previous projects (notably “Well”
and “Inner House”), exploring new territory
in the interrelationships between choreography, sculpture,
and water. Major sculptural elements will be a copper “well”,
large granite blocks, and a “springhouse”, placed
variously on land and in the water. |
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In the planning
stages
Befitting the Irish heritage of Boston and of Michael Dowling
himself, this project takes Medicine Wheel across the sea
to explore the myths, history, and energy of Derry, Northern
Ireland. The project focuses on key cultural, political
and artistic themes that are of immense importance in Ireland’s
past and in the post peace process today. A floating sculptural
installation will be built on a vessel that will travel
from Derry down the Foyle River into the Republic of Ireland
to the mouth of Lough Foyle, the legendary burial place
of the Celtic sea god Manamman. The artistic statement will
evoke the common spiritual and mythological landscape that
underlies all of Irish culture, challenging people to venture
into a time of reconciliation and a new spirit of unity. |
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2004
A Delicate Balance, by Michael Dowling
Greenhouse, by Peter Coffin
Seeing Below from Above, by Michele Brody
Paine Gallery and gardens
Oshkosh WI
Our partnership with nature is a delicate one. The lack
of rain for an extended period of time can bring us to our
knees. It does not take very long; a few weeks spreads panic
and shrivels crops. We are told to stop washing our cars,
cease watering the grass and take other water conservation
steps. It can turn a rain forest into a desert. Yet the
desert is as beautiful as the sea. In this piece made specifically
for the Paine Gallery and Gardens, I hope to explore this
duality: that nature is beautiful without us, that it can
kill us, and that we must, if only we can, maintain the
delicate balance of our co-existence. |
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