Open Entheon, Visionary Art Sanctuary
with Alex Grey & Allyson Grey
A striking new cultural space is taking shape in New York’s Hudson Valley. Entheon will offer a three-story, 12,000 square foot exhibition of the finest original artwork of the Visionary Art movement, where precious paintings, drawings, sculpture and moving image resonate with the highest states of consciousness. A chapel room with cathedral-esque latticework ceilings and archangels will display the Grey’s acclaimed Sacred Mirrors series.
Entheon means “a place to discover the Creator within.” At CoSM, Entheon will be a sanctuary of Visionary Art, honoring and preserving works that point to our common transcendental source. Three-stories of inspiring art will be installed when construction and renovation is complete, a build that began Autumn 2014. Framing and utilities are complete, walls are finished and being painted. The “intelligence and life” of the building is being turned on now and finishing work is underway.
The cast concrete sculptural exterior countenance of Entheon, designed by Alex Grey and modeled by Academy Award winning animator, Ryan Tottle, will be created and installed following the opening of the exhibition, as funding allows.
The Entheon Portal will feature doors of bronze sculptural relief entitled, Creating a Better World, by Alex Grey. Depicting Adam & Eve returning to the Garden, the artists paint a new world and harvest the Tree of Wisdom.
Through the inspiring portal, you enter the All One Gallery, exhibiting original artwork by leading masters of the International Visionary Art Movement. Inside the entrance, the World Prayer Wheel, by Alex Grey, may be turned by every visitor, each revolution symbolizing the repetition of the prayers inscribed, “May the Elements Be Purified.” “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” “May All Being Be Liberated.” “Sustain the Web of Life.”
The Entheon Museum Shop will offer affordable originals, limited editions, books and posters of the genre, an attractive and eclectic selection of artistic gifts and fine altar objects.
The Psychedelic Reliquary will host treasured artifacts and ephemera, including the spectacles of Dr. Albert Hofmann and the ashes of Timothy Leary. An altar honoring Visionary artist, William Blake will include Blake’s bust and rare graphic works by this essential Visionary artist and thinker, a featured highlight in the history of visionary art. A shrine inside the Reliquary Room will be dedicated to Alex’s artistic collaboration with Grammy Award winning band, Tool.
Enter the Chaos, Order & Secret Writing world of Allyson Grey. Through devotionally labor intensive drawings and paintings, her mystic abstractions point to the fabric of spectral light at the foundations of consciousness.
Alex Grey's original paintings Kissing, Copulating, Pregnancy, Birth, Nursing and other works comprise the Progress of the Soul series, on view in a narratively unfolding story around the room. Additional galleries on the second floor will exhibit performance relics and rarely seen early footage of the Grey’s provocative performance art rituals that led to the creation of CoSM and Entheon. One of Alex's most beloved monumental paintings, Gaia, a twelve by eight foot masterwork, will be on view. Painted in 1989, this visually prophetic work articulates the plight of our environment while also revealing two airplanes headed toward the Twin Towers.
“The mission of art is to make the soul perceptible.”
The third floor of Entheon will display Alex Grey's most transcendental and beloved paintings. Theologue, an ethereal landscape, fifteen-foot wide, provides the ground of being for a translucent meditating figure. Net of Being, featured on the album of Grammy award winning band, TOOL, Cosmic Christ, World Soul sculpture and Allyson Grey most reproduced work, Jewel Net of Indra, will grace the walls of the Great Hall, a meeting place for CoSM’s greatest community gatherings.
Enter the brick archway into the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors and reflect on twenty-one stages of the self, a transformation from the physical body into pure infinite love energy. Discover the creator within.
The inspiring 3-dimensional countenance surrounding Entheon will be sculpted in cast concrete. Giant molds will be created for the sculptural elements. The Steeplehead, the bronze doors, and the Soulbird guardians, the first sculptures to be funded for the exterior, are in creation and may be installed for the exhibition's opening.
Emerging from the Angels of the Four Directions, DNA Dragons of Consciousness Evolution, ascend to the Steeple Head, the One. The Steeplehead, cast in aluminum and hand painted, was the first Entheon sculpture to be funded, cast in Thailand, blessed by Dr. Bronner Camp at Burning Man, is ready to be installed when a Certificate of Occupancy is obtained from the Town of Wappinger.
The Steeplehead of Entheon suggests the people of four directions coming together in visionary oneness, a pinnacle of Sacred Unity where humanity meets divinity.
Banding the roof line, Secret Writing represents the language of creative expression. Allyson Grey's Secret Writing, comprised of twenty unpronounceable letters, are an original alphabet corresponding to the nameless presence existent in all sacred writing, the spirit embedded in communication that cannot be reduced to concepts.
Thanks to the outstanding 2013 Build Entheon Kickstarter Campaign, the support of 1,510 backers shot the project forward to fund architectural and engineering plans. With those funds, the bank came through with a construction loan and the build was initiated.
The 2016 Entheon Kickstarter campaign funded the power station to acclimatize and bring light to galleries, water to seven bathrooms, smart access and security throughout Entheon’s 12,000 square foot, three-story structure. Doubling the support over the previous campaign, the creative visionary community clearly answered the call and the station is now being empowered.
Interior work and equipment still required before Entheon can receive a Certificate of Occupancy is now estimated at: $250K.
Construction essentials up ahead include:
Consider making a contribution to fund the elevator ($40K), one bathroom ($12K), or a gallery ($75K-$250K). Naming opportunities are available.
Add to that the exterior work required before receiving a Certificate of Occupancy from the Town of Wappinger, estimated at: $250K.
Exterior work up ahead:
Consider making a contribution to fund the lamp posts that will light the way for many pilgrims. Naming opportunities are available.
To open Entheon, CoSM must raise $500,000.
To all who have helped in so many ways make this historic sacred work of co-creation an ongoing success, a community thanks you and we thank you with all of our hearts.
Together we can manifest the inevitable consequence of love —
The building of a temple!
“Much of the hardest work put into Entheon will never be visible after its finished. Thousands of feet of underground wire, data, gas and water lines... mountains of specs, indemnification agreements, contracts invoices and dirt roads will be buried, neatly filed away or paved over. I am honored to be a witness and a shovel in trenches.”