Showing posts with label hudson valley art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hudson valley art. Show all posts

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Conceptual Proposal for “Dear Mother Nature” Hudson Valley Artists 2012 curated by Linda Weintraub Samuel Dorsky Museum, SUNY, New Paltz

There had to be a spot that contained magic, power, a place of such presence that all your senses start tingling, where you feel high, as if suddenly the volume has been turned up, inside you, outside you, everywhere.
-Mickey Hart

Curator, Linda Weintraub, of the 2012 Hudson Valley Artists exhibition at the Dorsky Museum, SUNY, New Paltz, invited artists to send a gift, to Dear Mother Nature expressing their relationship to and feelings about nature. My gift, an idea from 2010 sketched out in my notebook, is an earth healing treatment that utilizes techniques from Jin Shin Jyutsu, an ancient healing art developed to balance the body’s invisible energy system. JSJ uses the right and left polarity of hands on the body, to “jumper-cable” and direct energy flows into distinct pathways to unify and integrate the body.



The Main Central Vertical Flow in JSJ begins in the spine at the coccyx and moves up through the solar plexus, heart, throat, middle of eyebrows, to the crown. Using the Hudson River as a metaphor for the human spine, my earth healing treatment acupunctures the land in 12 separate locations, along the east and west sides of the river, aligning and balancing across these energy centers.





Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon
Throat Kingston/Rhinebeck
Middle EyeCatskill/Hudson
Crown Albany/Troy

Drawing on the principle of batteries, copper rods wrapped with iron wire will be inserted into corresponding earth “chakras” representing the spine along the river.

The invisible network generated by human-made energy channels co-creates not only metaphor, but an actual physical and etheric connection to the planet.





Saturday, December 13, 2014

New Energy Situations, Connections & Algorithms

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon
Throat Kingston/Rhinebeck
Middle EyeCatskill/Hudson
Crown Albany/Troy

"Human beings have a quite different kind of energy than they had 200 years ago, or 500 or 1000 years ago; that today the energies of freedom are emerging in us, and that this is exactly the point where one can speak to, a kind of science of freedom.
Once the bottom line in our stocktaking of the world has been found then everything must orientate itself toward this new energy situation. This includes recognition of the fact that a new manifestation of energy is in the world, represented by the human being; and that this is also something new in human beings--leaving aside for the time being the extent to which it has spiritual links to other networks of forces individualized in the world.
And although this is a given, it is still something that must actually be perceived, as well as practiced, taught and investigated."
-Joseph Beuys What is Art?



My project of inserting copper rods wrapped with iron wire into the earth at specific points along the Hudson River has inspired spontaneous dialogue and interest from both friends and strangers. Leaving from a doctor's appointment, I bumped into my neon artist friend, Rocky Pinciotti, who I hadn't seen in years. Hearing about my Hudson River Jin Shin Jyutsu project, he excitedly suggested I go global with it, track all the points with GPS coordinates, and create a website to sell the copper rods worldwide. That very same week, having lunch with a friend in New Paltz, a stranger sitting alone at the next table, overhearing my conversation introduced himself, Jonathan Pazer. A once-personal-injury-lawyer transformed into a paper-folding-origami-artist, he too, was enthusiastic about my idea and recommended geocaching as an added component to the project.

Coincidences, chance meetings, dialogue--what happens to us every day, creates our own personal algorithms shared within our social environment. Using the Taoist concept of wu wei and allowing each location to appear spontaneously is to be my method.


As a result, the selected spine locations along the river unfold into its own strangely connected narrative and algorithm. This blog tells the story.


Coccyx (West) = Stony PointJohn CageAl Loving
Coccyx (East) = PeekskillMeteorite

Solar Plexus (West) = NewburghThomas EdisonNikola Tesla
Solar Plexus (East) = BeaconJohn CageSt. Teresa of Avila Galileo

Heart (West) = New PaltzEmma KunzAlbert Einstein
Heart (East) = PoughkeepsieSamuel MorseBilly Name

Throat (West) = KingstonDolmensPlato
Throat (East) = RhinebeckLinda Weintraub M.C. Richards

Middle Eye (West) = CatskillThomas ColeHudson River School
Middle Eye (East) = HudsonFrederick Edwin ChurchWalter DeMaria

Crown (West) = AlbanyMatter Consciousness
Crown (East) = TroyMaterial ScienceAlchemySpiritual Technology






Thursday, December 11, 2014

COCCYX = Peekskill→Meteorite

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon
Throat Kingston/Rhinebeck
Middle EyeCatskill/Hudson
Crown Albany/Troy


What is it that draws us to a place? Landscape, economic opportunity, familiarity, the unknown..? My second earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Peekskill, NY, on the east side of the Hudson River, representing the coccyx. I insert into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, along several chosen locations up the river representing points of the human spine. I am giving the river a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow.


Ink, pen, copper foil on paper
I look for specific places in these pre-chosen towns/cities, that feels like an attractor of energy to me, to insert my copper needles.
Once I learned of the meteorite that landed on the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in a suburban neighborhood in Peekskill, I knew I had to place my needle in close proximity.
Taken by S. Eichmiller of the Altoona Mirror from Mansion Park football stadium

On October 9, 1992, the meteorite entered the earth's atmosphere over Kentucky, exploded into fragments, and continued over West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania before it crashed into Wells Street, Peekskill. At least 16 people in several states were able to film the meteorite traveling through the sky that night.

Just a block from the crash site, I found an outcropping of rocks, which might have made for a better landing site. The Chevy Malibu and meteorite sold at auction for $100,000 and toured the world on display in a glass box.

Blue Mountain Reservation, Peekskill, NY
Peekskill Copper
41º 17' 2" N, 73º 54' 53" W

A severe thunder and lightening storm was taking place as we drove to the Peekskill site. My friend accompanying me, Claire Lofrese, suggested we do it another day but I thought not. Somehow the crackling light and roar in the sky felt ritualistic and perfect, as though the act itself and the copper material were summoning the skies and atmosphere. And as fate would have it, the rain stopped briefly so I was able to scramble up the wet rocks to hammer the needle into the ground.
With very wet shoes and a bit shaken from the severe weather, we sought refuge in nearby Cold Spring for a glass of merlot and Claire, so generously tells the tale below.


Wednesday, December 10, 2014

SOLAR PLEXUS = Newburgh→Thomas Edison→Nikola Tesla

Solar Plexus = Newburgh/Beacon
Throat Kingston/Rhinebeck
Middle EyeCatskill/Hudson
Crown Albany/Troy



"I expect to photograph thoughts...  I am convinced that a definite image formed in thought, must by reflex-action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might be read by a suitable apparatus... with the optic nerve being a part of earth."
-Nikola Tesla, 1933

What is it that draws us to a place, or person or an idea? A feeling, a moment of some kind of recognition?

My third earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Newburgh, NY, on the west side of the Hudson River, representing the solar plexus. I am inserting into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, along several chosen locations up the river representing acupuncture meridian points of the human spine. I am giving the Hudson River a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy-healing treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow (see first post).


My selection process of where to place the needles develops into an historical tour of the Hudson Valley, and of place finding me, drawing me to it, by its sheer nature of energetic interest...and its ability to hold onto to something that draws attention and people to it. 
And so I discover in Newburgh the place where Thomas Edison's very successful Electric Illuminating Company opened in 1884. Imagine electrifying and lighting up an entire city for the very first time. 

The building then....

Edison Electric Illuminating Co., Newburgh, NY 1884
Now.....
Edison Electric Illuminating Co., Newburgh, NY 2012
On this abandoned, boarded-up site, I set out to find a location to hammer my copper acupuncture spike/needle into the earth, without causing too much notice. I need soft earth and find my way to the back of the building.




I like the quiet, somewhat anonymous aspect of this project, creating an invisible network of copper needles in the earth; transmitting energy, thought, intention...all those conditions I hear and read so much about regarding mindfulness and quantum healing. I think of my copper spikes as "nerves being a part of the earth."

Newburgh Copper
41º 30' 14" N, 74º 0' 29" W
It is impossible referencing Edison without an understanding of Tesla, and their well-known intellectual and commercial debate over AC/DC. Tesla won but died broke and alone. And Edison, known as the inventor of the light bulb, did not invent the light bulb. He improved upon a 50-year-old-idea with a more practical light bulb, using lower current electricity and a carbonized filament.


Edison did invent the phonograph using tin foil. He noticed when playing the tape of a telegraph machine at high speeds, it resembled the sound of spoken words and this caused him to wonder if he could record sound. The ability to record sounds was by the gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner, and actually the first record player as we know it.



Inventions and ideas about sound bring me back to John Cage, to his term non-intention, and his idea of allowing chance and indeterminacy to develop a plan of action..."to diminish that kind of activity of the ego and to increase the activity that accepts the rest of creation." It was by chance, and paying attention to weird unknown sounds, that drove and inspired Edison to end up holding a world record of 1093 patents.