Within the context of the group 'Hopechild1' fellow blogger 'Stmms', posed the questions - 'Do you have a favourite Building and is there something in feng shui'?

My first experience of working around the principles of Feng Shui were twenty years ago when I was given free rein by architect, Carl Massara to transform a large 100 year old building in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Massara had done an amazing renovation on the building, with a view to renting the spaces out as offices. However, after a year where there was no interest at all from prospective tenants, he came to me with a proposal.

He gave me three months to transform the building with my art work, at which time there was to be a grand opening. If tenants signed up after this event, then I would be given a free studio space in the building along with my fee. I love a challenge and so agreed to do this.

Before starting work on a mural, I asked my friend Adze Mixxie the astrologer if he would come and look at the building. Adze, always ahead of his time, was already talking about the benefits of feng shui. He immediately said, this building is on a 'sick site'

With his guidance I painted the following oil on panel, 8 x 5 meter mural in the very beautiful, 13 meter high atrium. Within the mural were hidden many symbols representing the history of the town, along with astrological symbols which Adze felt would benefit the building. Note some of my recurring image themes also feature in this mural, i.e. peacocks, birds of paradise, humming birds, and calla lillies.

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He then said, that the large cross beams which hung beneath the glass roof, would have to be broken up with mobiles. One of the key princiiples to feng shui is keeping the positive (chi) energy flowing through a space. Any dead ends, or beams can interfere with this flow.

This is where another wonderful friend and artist Howard Thorne came into play. He suggested that I use 15 cm housing insulation, which could be easily cut with a jigsaw and at the same time be very light. That's when I got the idea for three 6 meter hanging kinetic mobiles. In other words mobiles that would gently move as air circulated through the antrium. I call these three mobiles - 'humanoids'

Here is a picture of them in situe and another of the installation process.

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By the way the reason we are looking up, is because Howard Thorne, (who was in his early seventies then) was at the top of the ladder!!)

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The bottom line is that once the mural and mobiles where installed it was as if some magic had taken place. People were already signing up to rent spaces, and by the time we had the gala event three months after I began work, all offices in the building were rented.

Adze always said, that what we had done was merely a temporary fix. That were the mobiles to be removed, the energy in the building would change. Several years after installation they were removed, and everything did change!

It turned out that there had been an Native American Indian burial site in the area of the building - and so I feel that Adze was right.

Since this time, I have used basic feng shui principles in my living spaces, and it really does make a huge difference to my general well being.

A Bientot