Medicine Wheel inspires on World AIDS Day

The dark, earthen atmosphere artist Michael Dowling created for his latest installation at Medicine Wheel, "The Paper Project", inspired a respectful, enlightened group of visitors during the event's 24 hour vigil on World AIDS Day, Monday, Dec. 1.

"It's been really steady and really mindful," said Dowling, the mastermind behind Medicine Wheel and "The Paper Project", a project he hopes engages visitors "emotionally and makes them feel part of something larger."

Prayers on handmade brown papers with sentiments such as "May we always HOPE" and "Every moment is your life" adorned the section directly in front of the Cyclorama's entrance of the 12-feet-high, 600-feet-long wall constructed for the exhibit, which united disparate shredded paper "moments" created by thousands in one massive wall covering.

Denny Saucedo, a high school senior who works with The Youth Leadership Corp, a program that helps local youths at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church on Shawmut Avenue, said the installation helped show the youths in her program the widespread effect HIV and AIDS have.

"It makes people want to be more careful, " said Carlos Cabana, another high school senior who works for The Youth Leadership Corp, of "The Paper Project". "It'll make them take things more serious."

Hector Sanchez, part of the Pine Street Inn Transitional Housing Program, helped build "The Paper Project" installation and asked to read a poem he wrote as part of the 24 hour vigil. Sanchez, who said a heroin addiction cost him his marriage and destroyed his life, called poetry his "hidden talent."

"Heroin ruined me for 25 years and now I want to do right for the next 25," said Sanchez. "I'm just trying to stay soaked in sobriety."

For Sanchez and others the decision to participate in or attend "The Paper Project" vigil was both necessary and therapeutic.

"I needed to share it," said Sanchez, sighing. "My choice of drugs caused me to hurt a lot of good people in my life."

Eddie Torres also read a brief poem shortly before 5:00 p.m. as visitors trickled in.

"You got to go back and help the addicts," said Torres, another former drug addict who has gone clean after a checkered past in which he was shot and locked behind bars for 10 years. "Every time I go to places like this I try to send a message."

With the help of programs such as the one Sanchez is currently enrolled in at Pine Street and Medicine Wheel, he now proudly says, "I love the person that I am today."

Another Boston resident, who requested that she remain anonymous, typified the mood at Medicine Wheel. Quietly sitting in a corner observing the vigil's hourly offerings -- including spoken word from Sanchez and Torres -- the woman, who said she had slept at the Cyclorama and would return later that night after she left for some errands, spoke of the event's importance for her.

"I've been here the last two years," she said. "A friend of mine died, not from AIDS, but not too long before that. I started coming as a community healing process."

In recovery herself, the woman said, "I know a lot of drug addicts, so I know a lot of people affected by [HIV and AIDS]."

Through "The Paper Project", Dowling, Sanchez, Torres, and the thousands of others involved in Medicine Wheel have communicated the most essential concept of World AIDS Day, awareness.

"HIV or AIDS isn't something you mess with," said Saucedo. "It doesn't hurt just one person or his family, it hurts everyone in the world."