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Citizens to Contribute Good Wishes (and Art) for Health on the New Haven Green

Milagros will be held June 20-21.

An ancient Latin American ritual will be recreated in New Haven, the first U.S. city to participate in a new global health effort: Community Interventions for Health. The public is invited to help create a community–built altar for healing, and in the process launch the Community Interventions for Health’s New Haven Collaborative.

The June 20–21 event takes place on the New Haven Green as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. It is being organized by Community Interventions for Health—The New Haven Collaborative, a group of volunteers and public health professionals seeking to call attention to the urgent need for better health, and to highlight community efforts to improve health.

Artist Michael Anderson (best known for his gigantic Torosaurus sculpture outside the Peabody Museum) will lead the effort to create a large sculpture that will symbolize New Haven’s collective wishes for better health. Hundreds of wafer–thin copper cards will be provided to visitors, along with palm–size moldings. Akin to a small stone rubbing, the milagros comes into relief after a few minutes of vigorous rubbing. The result is a shiny, embossed copper card that can be personalized before being attached to the hosts: two larger than life cows, resting on the grass. By the end of the event, the cows will be like giant altars, adorned with copper robes of milagros symbolizing New Haven’s collective hopes for the community’s health.

A milagros is a small object traditionally used to ask for healing, recovery, protection and rescue. In Latin American culture, they are offered to deities as miniature symbols of one’s concerns. They are also given in thanks for prayers answered. Milagros translates literally to “miracle.”

“I decided on a pastoral image of cows laying down on the green,” Anderson said. “These will hopefully bring a sense of calm to the milagros and should look quite dramatic with the copper fluttering over them. The cows will evoke a less complicated time, and will, as we add milagros to them, evolve into sacred things.”

Visitors of all ages will be able to choose from over 40 plastic reusable reliefs made by the artist and volunteers to make their personal milagros. Anderson has created body parts and more abstract representations of illness and conditions such as diabetes, autism and cancer. Materials will also be available so that visitors can hand produce their own images. Anderson is also addressing global health by making moldings that represent the environment, the economic crisis, endangered species, addiction, and alternative travel and energy production.

Supplies are available to teachers and their students who wish to participate but who are not able to attend the event. To make arrangements, contact helenkauder@gmail.com.