Knerr was selected to create a work that the visitor first encounters when entering the Outlook building. Her simple and poignant site-specific installation utilizes colored water as a metaphor for sharing. Understanding that 1440 Multiversity is about the act of giving and then passing these lessons forward, Knerr wanted to create an installation that visually illustrates a years worth of sharing by creating seven Chakra Tools from raw canvas and other organic materials.

By inserting these tools in the individual water receptacles for a year, a transference of the energy from the colored reservoirs will slowly absorb and creep up the tools altering their color. The color and the tool height relate to the bodies seven Chakras. Each anniversary of the opening of 1440 Multiversity will produce a set of tools that have been dried and removed. They will then be installed elsewhere on the campus to visually illustrate the passing of one year. New Chakra tools will be installed in the water tanks so this ongoing artwork may continue to remind everyone of the importance of patience, sharing and giving.

Giving and receiving are activated by the artist placing a stone in each tank of colored water representing an energetic center of the body. The stones (from right to left) placed in the tanks are Clear Quartz in the violet, crown chakra tank; Amethyst in the indigo, third eye chakra tank; Amazonite in the blue, throat chakra tank; Rose Quartz in the green, heart chakra tank, Hematite in the yellow, power, solar plexus tank; Carnelian in the orange, creative, sacral chakra tank and Red Jasper in the red, grounded, root chakra tank. The piece is meant to be read both from left to right and right to left in it’s diagonal. In Shamanic healing the chakras are cleared by spining them with an open hand not touching the body. The canvas tools are meant to interact with through contemplation of a particular color or part of the energetic body, whether it be the “lower” root, creativity or power centers, the “upper” throat, third eye and crown, or the heart which binds our roots and wings. The heart is the center of our energetic body.

The final ritual performed in private for the installation created seven portals, one for each individual quality of the chakras. This is done by invoking in verbal proclaimation that in fact these small bodies of colored water will be in communion with all beings that pass through 1440 Multiversity, that they will magnetically attract and transmute energies that are not required for our physical bodies “chi” or life force.