THROAT = Rhinebeck → Linda Weintraub → Eco-Art → M.C.Richards

Coccyx = Stony Point/Peekskill

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon

Heart = New Paltz/Poughkeepsie

Throat = Kingston/Rhinebeck

Middle Eye= Catskill/Hudson

Crown = Albany/Troy

"It is possible to deal with the entire environment as a work of art."
--Marshall McLuhan

My eighth earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Rhinebeck, NY, on the east side of the Hudson River, representing the throat energy point in the body. I am inserting into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, in twelve locations along the Hudson River. The locations represent acupuncture meridian points corresponding to the human spine. I am giving the river and valley a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy-healing treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow.

Invited by curator Linda Weintraub to submit a proposal for her Dear Mother Nature exhibition at the Dorsky Museum at SUNY, New Paltz gave me the perfect opportunity to realize my idea of applying Jin Shin Jyutsu techniques to the earth.

Choosing Linda Weintraub's  Rhinebeck property, representing the throat energy point in my project, was the most obvious of choices in deciding on where to insert my copper and iron needles. The throat chakra is associated with the ears, listening and speaking; the communication center.

Linda is one of our greatest communicators on Eco Art and her home and life is a realization of her environmental philosophy of creating productive eco-systems. Her latest book, To Life! Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, documents the Eco Art movement from the 1970's into the 21st-century.

Linda Weintraub's home in Rhinebeck

K. Anderson placing Copper/Iron Earth Acupuncture Needle

Rhinebeck Copper
41º 57' 29" N, 73º 49' 43" W

Numerous performances curated by Weintraub take place on her Rhinebeck property throughout several of her handmade outdoor amphitheatres.

In 2004, I presented an outdoor performance on the same site I now have placed my copper needle. Two performers in translucent metallic silk robes lit with 160 led's sewn on the inside, explore movement to the sound of a didjeridu played by Thomas Workman. 

Alongside a pond, the reflections in the water create a sensation of floating in space.

"If the source of our design sense is our bio-psychic identity, this makes design-insight a part of ecology. It is important for us to develop our intuition for design ecology: for living inner forms...and the health of the whole."
--M.C. Richards

MIDDLE EYE = Catskill → Thomas Cole → Hudson River School

Coccyx = Stony Point/Peekskill

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon

Heart = New Paltz/Poughkeepsie

Throat = Kingston/Rhinebeck

Middle Eye= Catskill/Hudson

Crown = Albany/Troy

"As above, so below."
--Hermes Trismegistus

My ninth earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Catskill NY, on the west side of the Hudson River, representing the middle eye energy point in the body. I am inserting into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, in twelve locations along the Hudson River. The locations represent acupuncture meridian points corresponding to the human spine. I am giving the river and valley a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy-healing treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow.

The Hudson River, a tidal estuary, where salt water meets fresh water, is a river that flows two ways in 24 hours in two high and two low tides. The tidal pulse from the ocean is felt from the NYC harbor all the way to Troy, 153 miles away. Originally named Mahicantuck for the "great waters in constant motion."

The Hudson River School of landscape painting, known for its compositions of luminous light and details of nature began with Thomas Cole, a writer, poet, philosopher, observer and painter. Cole wrote his ideas down and referred to his writings when he painted in his studio.

Sunrise in the Catskill Mountains, 1826, Thomas Cole

the mists were resting on the vale of the Hudson like drifted snow

tops of distant mountains in the east were visible-things of another world

the sun rose from bars of pearly hue

above there were clouds light and warm and the clear sky was of a cool grayish hint

the mist below the mountain began first to be lighted up

and the trees on the tops of the lower hills cast their shadows over the misty surface

--innumerable streaks

a line of light on the extreme horizon was very beautiful

seen through the breaking mists the fields were exquisitely fresh and green

though dark, the mountainside was sparkling

and the Hudson where it was uncovered to the sight

slept in deep shadow.

And so it is seemed apt to insert my copper needle at Cedar Grove, the studio of the father of American landscape painting and founder of the Hudson River School of art.

Cedar Grove, Thomas Cole Studio

Catskill Copper
42º 13' 31" N, 73º 51' 41" W

Cedar Grove, Thomas Cole Studio

Landscape composition is defined by the horizon line, where earth meets sky. Robert Smithson says if we were to walk to the horizon line, we would never get there:

"The Horizon, in this line where light meets earth, objects cease to exist...One is always crossing the horizon, yet it always remains distant. The horizon line is something other than what it appears; it is closedness in openess, it is an enchanted region where down is up."

M.C. Richards writes about the crossing point, the place inside a plant where the division or decision to grow down into the soil or up into the sunlight takes place. A pull between ascending and descending energy.

"The crossing point is archetypal...is the name given to the layer of cells out of which the root and the shoot of a plant begin to sprout...a crossing point between earth and sun.  The plant grows in opposite directions simultaneously, down into the earth and up into the light and air. A continuum of opposites."

--M.C. Richards

Humans do not have to decide which way we will be for we are both.

MIDDLE EYE = Hudson → Frederick Edwin Church → Walter De Maria

Coccyx = Stony Point/Peekskill

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon

Heart = New Paltz/Poughkeepsie

Throat = Kingston/Rhinebeck

Middle Eye= Catskill/Hudson

Crown = Albany/Troy

PAINTING TO SEE THE ROOM

"Drill a small, almost invisible, hole

in the center of the canvas

and see the room through it."

-Yoko Ono

Hudson River view from Olana, Hudson, NY

My earth mapping project, Main Central Vertical Flow (see first post) consists of  inserting copper poles wrapped in iron wire along several chosen locations along the Hudson River, corresponding to acupuncture points on the human spine. I am giving the river a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment, an energy healing flow. This is the tenth earth needle insertion, on the west side of the river, representing the middle eye, which has brought me to Olana, Frederic Edwin Church's landscape of the "contemplative sublime" in Hudson, NY.  

What is it that draws us to any one particular place in the landscape...and how to direct attention or mindful intention to this location. The Hudson River school of luminous landscape paintings were masters of detail and observation  and Church was considered one of the best landscape painters of his time. Driven by the transcendental philosophy of that time, writers and painters believed an individual's knowledge and experience could go beyond the self and visible world to gain a closer understanding of the spiritual, which could be found in nature.

How does one define what it feels and looks to be, in nature, on the landscape, in one's body, with more than seeing with the eyes? How does one expand seeing and feeling a place in the kind of close-up looking and intimate touching, the kind that occurs between lovers or parents and infants?

Deleuze and Guattari have named this experience as smooth space, "the space of the smallest deviation...a space of contact of small tactile or manual actions of contact." We are intimately linked to the earth; bodies inhabit places and places are lived through and by our bodies. Earth retains memory of the past invisible to us. When body and place are intermeshed with intention, the result is mapping in a powerful way.

My engagement with earth acupuncture is to create an invisible map through material substance. Utilizing a holistic perception of the forces in these substances; copper, iron, placement, intention, I arrange the copper needles/poles in particular patterns according to the philosophy of Jin Shin Jyutsu energy balancing patterns. 

Hudson Copper
42° 12' 47" N,  73°52' 25" W

My ideas force me to think about the artist, Walter De Maria and his intention with his sublime 1976 project, The Vertical Earth Kilometer. A one-kilometer long brass rod, two inches in diameter, was inserted one kilometer straight into the earth through six geological layers with only the 2" diameter top lying flush to the surface. The artwork is almost entirely hidden from view.

Vertical Earth Kilometer, 1977,  Walter De Maria

The construction and drilling work of De Maria's The Vertical Earth Kilometer, in Kassel Germany, took 79 days and cost $750,000. 

Cards, 2007 - Ian Whittlesea

Ink on card

Unlimited edition, free to take away

Void Room, 1961, Yves Klein
An empty room filled with "immaterial pictorial sensibility"

"For the first time, the seeing that I am is for me really visible; for the first time I appear to myself completely turned inside out under my own eyes."

-Merleau-Ponty, The Visible & the Invisible

CROWN = Troy → Materials Science → Alchemy→ Spiritual Technology

Coccyx = Stony Point/Peekskill

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon

Heart = New Paltz/Poughkeepsie

Throat = Kingston/Rhinebeck

Middle Eye= Catskill/Hudson

Crown = Albany/Troy

"Alchemy is not merely an art or science to teach metallic transmutation, so much as a true and solid science that teaches how to know the center of all things, which in the divine language is called the Spirit of Life."

Pierre-Jean Fabre, Les Secrets chymiques,  1636

Hermetic philosophy teaches seven principles that define the functions of the universe and the self:

1. Mentalism: all is mind.

2. Correspondence: as above so below.

3. Vibration: nothing rests, everything moves.

4. Polarity: everything has its pair of opposites.

5. Rhythm: everything flows, out and in.

6. Cause and effect: everything happens according to Law.

7. Gender: everything has its masculine and feminine principle

My translation of these principles defines all things, people and actions as being interconnected in non-material form; energy, spirit, intuition, God...it goes by many names. Our bodies act as major antenna systems with the chakras and acupuncture points acting as an advanced radar system.

The purpose of this interconnectedness or evolutionary energy, is a transmutation into a higher inner-being or consciousness, in order to forward the evolution of the human species and with it, the planet. William Tiller, one of the world's leading scientiests on the structure of matter, furthers the idea in his book, Science and Human Transformation, stating, "Thought energy is one important category of subliminal energy capable of triggering the cosmic computer system, which, when properly focused is quite capable of altering the vibration of water into that of wine or triggering even more impressive phenomena that currently fit into the category of miracles."

With this in mind, I continue my project of inserting conductive copper and iron rods into the earth, with the metaphysical idea of creating a network of, if you will, earth acupuncture points along the east and west sides of the Hudson River, based on a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy healing pattern, the Main Central Vertical flow. Forwarding the idea of material matter in a place and settling on a location/site to insert each needle, becomes the intersection between mind and place, or spirit and matter.

The location begins large, as in the city of Troy, and then narrows down to a singular point, in this case, the Materials Engineering building at RPI, a place of intense and focussed study of meta-materials.

Materials Engineering at RPI

I become a dowser of sorts, the place to insert the needle takes on a life of its own and draws me in.  A somewhere that becomes irrationally captured and viewed for its metaphoric significance. The location vibrates largely because I allow myself to wander into it. "You must travel at random...you risk getting lost in the thickets, but that is the only way to make art," according to Robert Smithson.

Troy copper
42º 43' 43"N, 73º 40' 53 W

The needles act as anonymous radionic detectors picking out waves in the atmosphere enhancing subtle energy levels, like an invocation.

CROWN = Albany → Matter ↔ Energy ↔ Consciousness

Coccyx = Stony Point/Peekskill

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon

Heart = New Paltz/Poughkeepsie

Throat = Kingston/Rhinebeck

Middle Eye= Catskill/Hudson

Crown = Albany/Troy

"As you perceive something, you give birth to a thought, and this thought now thinks. Now that it exists, now that it has been conjured, now that it has been focused, now it vibrates. Now, by law of attraction, other thoughts that are vibrationally same will come to it."

-Abraham Hicks

I continue my project of inserting conductive copper and iron rods into the earth, with the metaphysical idea of creating a network of, if you will, earth acupuncture points along the east and west sides of the Hudson River, based on a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy healing pattern, the Main Central Vertical flow. Forwarding the idea of material matter in a place and settling on a location/site to insert each needle, becomes the intersection between mind and place, or spirit and matter.

In choosing a place, eleven of the twelve locations came smoothly to me, as in a dream. Within the radius of my chosen cities, I intuitively knew by looking at maps and googling sites, where to begin; in the outer boundaries of a place allowing myself to be led to a specific point on the earth's surface. For some unknown reason, Albany escaped my wandering process. This was the final needle in this project and feeling lost in this open-ended process, I consulted  dancer/healer/dowser Susan Osberg. Her dowsing method using a map of Albany yielded a response to one specific area that focused as a starting point. 

Susan Osberg dowsing

Interestingly, the area most activated by her dowsing tool turned out to be not only an early pre-historic site, but the place where Henry Hudson settled a trading agreement with the Algonquian Indian tribes. My wandering process of zeroing in on a specific site continued to elude me as I searched the many historical places in the area. Not clearly understanding why the process was taking more time for me to grasp the intuitive feeling of knowing where to begin, I finally discovered the reason why.

An arsenal, the oldest continuously active arsenal of the United States army occupying 142 acres of land was the area identified by the energetic movement of the dowser . The Watervliet Arsenal produces the most advanced, high tech, high powered weaponry for tank and mortar systems. The place yields such a frequency that I could not find my way without the help of another healer.

My last earth acupuncture needle, representing the crown chakra, was up against some major frequency disturbance.

Watervliet Arsenal
Albany, NY

The site barbed-wired and fenced off with cameras positioned everywhere was an obstacle to the intuitive process of communion with place. Allowing oneself to wander, in Robert Smithson's words, to get lost in the thickets to make art, didn't seem like an option. Just a short distance away, on a hill, I saw the electrical power towers that fed current into this massive war endeavor. I knew instantly this was the final place for the last earth acupuncture needle in this experimental project of amplifying matter into spirit.

Albany copper
42º 32' 18"N, 73º 43' 3"W

For an atom as a transmitter, the channel that limits the communication is generally the air or atmosphere between the atom and a detecting instrument. For a person as a transmitter, the channel that limits the communication is generally the human being themselves.  The scientist, William Tiller proposes the following steps in the path of human transformation to increase the communication bandwidth.

PRACTICE LOVE WITH FOCUSED INTENTION

⇓

MORE SPIRIT MANIFESTS IN THE BODY

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MORE CONSCIOUSNESS GROWS IN THE BODY

⇓

MORE COHERENCE DEVELOPS AT ALL LEVELS

⇓

GREATER POWER FLUX DENSITIES FLOW

THROUGH THE BODY INTO CREATIVE ACTION

⇓

GREATER HEALING/TRANSFORMATION OF

SELF/LARGER SELF AND PLANET OCCUR