The Art Line

Envisioned as a line of walkable, interactive, outdoor artworks stretching across the heart of America on the 39th Latitude.

The ARTLINE - Across the Heart of America

DEDICATED TO ALEX CHAMPION (April 16, 1940 - Nov. 14, 2021)

The Art Line was envisioned as a line of walkable, interactive, outdoor artworks stretching across the heart of America on the 39th Latitude.  With art as a conduit, the Art Line fosters a sense of unity and awareness by promoting a series of connections between the individual and Nature; between the community members themselves and by linking the communities on the Art Line.

ORIGINATION

The idea of a straight line across the country developed when Alex Champion saw an aerial photo of three earthworks he created on his land in Mendocino County, California. The three sites straddled a small flat hill and the end designs were invisible to each other from the ground. He discovered that they lay in a straight line.

In the spring of 2000, Alex began construction of the Flower Wand design as an earthwork. The idea then came to make a line of earthworks across the country with the flower wand at each end. The Flower Wand is a composite symbol. The handle is made of four meander patterns. Each end contains three vesicas arranged as a flower. The earth work Flower Wand is located in Philo, California USA.

Alex and Joan Champion and Marilyn Larson met at the home of Toby Evans (just east of Kansas City, MO) in Nov. 2000 to install one of Alex’s earthworks. This 55’ diameter, 9-petal vesica star design was laid out in sand, outlined with base quartz crystal near the existing Prairie Labyrinth. Toby called the installation “Chante Ishta” (meaning “Single Eye of the Heart” in Cherokee). The 9-petal vesica became the symbol for the Art Line.

We did not choose the 39th latitude; it chose us! Alex’s initial idea developed into The Art Line Project after discovering the unlikely coincidence that the earthworks at Toby’s and the Champions were at the same 39 degree latitude, one fifth of a mile from being exact.

As Alex’s brain child, he outlined a 28-mile wide band, centered on the 39.1 north latitude between 38.9 and 39.3 degrees, running through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the southern tip of New Jersey and the District of Columbia on the East coast.

We were excited about enlisting other artists to build labyrinths on this line across these states, imaging the benefit to the collective of having a concentration of people across the heart of America walking the designs with positive intentions. Selecting artists and assigning them to specific locations was as far as the left-brain portion of the project went, as it side-railed with all the red tape involved in raising money and securing sites. Instead of unfolding the way we thought it should, the Universe had a different plan. This emerged in the form of a grassroots movement that occurred naturally. People who lived on the 39th latitude (who knew nothing about the Art Line) were inspired to create labyrinths on their own. Amazingly, the movement expanded to the public sector and resulted in labyrinths at conference centers, churches and spiritual centers, public and Montessori schools, hospitals, and even a Military Medical Center (Walter Reed) in Bethesda, Maryland, that commissioned Master Stone Builder Marty Kermeen to install a labyrinth on the base. The Art Line had a mind (and a heart) of its own.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE of the 39th Latitude

To ascribe a meaning onto a line running across the country was certainly not a new idea, although adding labyrinths and walkable art to it was. It seemed we were being directed unconsciously to re-energize an ancient grid line. The 39th latitude closely follows US 40 highway, built on top of several older highways, most notably the National Road and the Victory Highway. But even prior to that, the route can be traced back to several well established Native American footpaths.

Found on the line are important existing sites such as The Great Serpent Mound in south-central Ohio, attributed to the indigenous Adena culture. After visiting this ancient site in 1987, Alex Champion developed his own mounded pattern technique, literally moving the earth to create 40 major earthworks over 30 some years.

Other notable sites on the 39th latitude are Perelandra Center for Nature Research founded by Machaelle Small Wright in Warrenton, Virginia, and The Barnes Works, aka Seal Township Works in Sergeants, Ohio, which is an enormous circle-square complex aligned to the four cardinal directions.

The Barnes Works was built in the early Woodland Period around 370 BC, making it older than Serpent Mound or Cahokia. The square was 30% larger than the base of the Great Pyramid at Giza. It was part of a much larger complex, much of which remains intact, including over a dozen burial mounds and the famous Piketon Graded Way. This was the epicenter of the first great mound-building civilization in North America. Cahokia Mounds in Illinois is at 38.650 latitude.

The Barnes Works lie within a few feet of the 39th Parallel. This is no accident. Geoffrey Sea, present owner of The Barnes Works, discovered certain geometric-astronomic relationships at the site that account for its placement. The Great Square at Sergeants served as the prehistoric center for a cardinal grid that extended hundreds of miles in each direction.

In the words of Geoffrey Sea—“The first great construction on the Art Line was the Barnes Square in 370 BC, which defined the proper latitude for sacred astronomical observation. Serpent Mound was then built at close to the same latitude at a fixed distance from the Barnes Square, in relation to it. Cahokia was then built at another fixed distance from the Barnes Square, also at about the same latitude (correcting for altitude and horizon differences). Non-coincidentally, the distance from the Barnes Square to Cahokia is exactly 20 times the distance as that from the Barnes Square to Serpent Mound. The prehistoric Indians used a base-20 number system. This axis of the Barnes Square - Serpent Mound - Cahokia is what defined the 39th Parallel as the central sacred latitude in prehistoric times. Another sacred line runs north-south from the Barnes Square, encompassing a whole other set of prehistoric earthworks.”

~ Geoffrey Sea, SargentsPigeon@aol.com
1832 Wakefield Mound Road, Sargents, OH 45661

THE MODERN LABYRINTH MOVEMENT

The modern era labyrinth movement has expanded well beyond our 28-mile wide band. Our straight-line focus was akin to pulling back the taut string of a bow to target an ancient through-line across the middle of the country. The purpose of a through-line is to provide a backbone, supporting and connecting the individual parts so that past-present and future can merge and harmonize. Perhaps our focused idea of the Art Line served as a stabilizing spine for the profusion of labyrinths springing up in every direction. The linear concept of imagining one line was our attempt to rekindle the same infusion of cooperation and enthusiasm we as four artists experienced by bringing our skills together and working with our hands in alignment with the Earth.

Our ambitious vision to build labyrinths across the heart of America to raise the collective vibration, and affect change may have been a lightning rod to concentrate and conduct the flow, but it was not ours to control. The labyrinth movement has spread like wild fire, igniting people from every walk of life to build, walk and maintain labyrinths.

As part of my own exploration in working with the Prairie Labyrinth it was revealed to me how the counter-rotating paths could be used as a Soul-Bridge to assist earthbound souls in returning to their Original Light.

Labyrinths as Portals 

The growing number of earth based labyrinths created over the last twenty to thirty years make up an invisible circuitry of Earth to Sky antennas serving as re-calibration stations, plugging our 3rd dimensional reality into the higher grid of incoming frequencies.

The architecture of the counter-rotating paths around a central vortex naturally produce a portal that can be used in the release and renewal process that humanity is undergoing. This dynamic is felt by souls both in and out of bodies, in the seen and unseen realms.

Continual use of a labyrinth cleans, regenerates and expands the field around the people involved with them, adding to the circulating repository of balancing Light stored beneath them. Viewed as 5th dimensional (5D+) Self-Towers, moving through a labyrinth can help us clear old accumulated static and dross while plugging us into higher vibrations. Labyrinths, which appear to be stationary, are multidimensional portals, reminding us that we are mobile human portals with direct access to this ever- expanding network of incoming Light. As Earth altars, they bring us back to the sacredness of who we are, reminding us that we too are receivers and transmitters of energy, here to assist with the accelerated transformation of our Great Awakening.

If you know of a labyrinth or sacred site on the 39th Latitude or plan on building a labyrinth on the Art Line, please register your labyrinth on the Labyrinth Locator so it can be added to the Art Line registry.

To see Labyrinths on the Art Line as well as other Labyrinth sites across America visit wellfedspirit.org

Alex Champion’s book “My Exploration of Labyrinths” can be found on Amazon. Richly illustrated with over 250 photos and drawings of his earthwork creations spanning 34 years. Forward by Lea Goode Harris.