This is the tiniest divining rod I collected. It was found on the ground on Governor's Island in New York City. I think it is from a London Plane tree. It's almost more like a talisman of a divining rod than a usable tool, but it was pointing towards the harbor when I found it.

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1) Micro Divining Rod From Governor's Island NYC

This is one of a couple of divining rods that I found that got separated from their notes about where they were found, so I'm not sure anymore. It's a mystery divining rod.

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2) I Don't Remember Where I Found This One...

This rod, like a few others here, comes from my own home. This is a peach tree branch from my front yard that got broken off by a delivery truck. Peach, like Hazel, is a traditional wood for water divining.

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3) Peach Tree Divining Rod From Allston MA

This is one of a couple of divining rods that I found that got separated from their notes about where they were found, so I'm not sure anymore. It's another mystery divining rod! 

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4) I Can't Remember Where I Found This One Either

When I began this project, I started keeping an eye out for Y-shaped shaped sticks everywhere I went. This was the first one I found. I was riding my bicycle home from Somerville, but I found it in Cambridge MA. It got bent and almost broke in transit but was resilient.

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6) This Is The First Divining Rod I Found

This is the last of the mystery divining rods. (The ones where my notes got separated from the sticks.) But I know I found it in New York City somewhere. The two possible options are Long Island City in Queens, and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn.

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7) This Is The Final Mystery One From Somewhere In NYC

This divining rod comes from Leverett Pond in Jamaica Plain, MA. Leverett Pond has a lot of personal significance to me because I used to play there and forage for wild edible and medicinal plants there with my family as a child.

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8) Leverett Pond Divining Rod

I  think of this as the ur-divining rod in this project. It was found on the street where I grew up, the Jamaicaway, in Jamaica Plain MA. I saw it from a car window and then went back and got it on foot the next day. It was heavy and I carried it a long way. Around two ponds.

It is recommended that you use a divining rod that comes from somewhere very close to where you are seeking water. Almost all of the divination tools here come from places that are important to me in my larger, lifelong search for understanding.

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9) Jamaicaway Divining Rod

n my practice as an artist and as a being making sense of the world around me, I often make things that I don't show publicly: talismans, rituals, charms... 

My efforts to learn about water divining brought me time and time again to writing and discussions of pendulums and lines of energy that crisscross the planet and which are used by dowsers to situate wells and labyrinths. So I decided I should use some of the strategies I use for this more private part of my practice to make a pendulum for this project. It is made of a found piece of iron fence post; fishing line that I reclaimed from an installation I did in the Hapgood-Wright Town Forest in Concord, MA in 2017; and a brass fitting that I've had on my keychain since a period in the early 2000's when I did a trial apprenticeship with a plumber, because I was very seriously considering becoming a plumber.

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10) Homemade Pendulum

This divining rod comes from near the defunct rose garden in Christian Herter Park, along the Charles River in Allston, MA. It's a place where I walk and think a lot.

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11) Herter Park Divining Rod

I found this divining rod on the grounds of a friend's house where I feel very peaceful. I sat on his porch in a rocking chair and listened to bugs one night while wrapping it in thread until I felt like I was ready to do something else. I really like the way it looks.

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12) New Hampshire Divining Rod Wrapped In Thread

I found this divining rod near the edge of Squam Lake in NH. It pointed me towards a very good spot for swimming.

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13) Divining Rod From Squam Lake NH

I found this divining rod while hiking Mount Israel in NH.

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14) Divining Rod From Mount Israel NH

This portrait of a divining rod was created collectively during a lightly structured conversation about intuition that I led together with storyteller/doula Sara Domingo Brouner (https://www.placenterra.com/about.html) at the ARoS Museum in Aarhus DK on the last day of a residency I had there in September of 2022.

Contributors include Camilla Bonde Bech, Daniel Domingo Brouner, Myriam Diatta, Abdul Dube, Beatriz Gonzalez, Christina Glob, Klemme Hansen, John Helfrich, Brittmarie Hermannses, Jemila MacEwan, Nova Scott-James, and Robert Ruth.

17)Portrait Of A Divining Rod Made At ARoS Museum In Denmark

Seeking the Source is a project by the artist Hey There Kapplow, commissioned by Arlinda Shtuni for the exhibition "Waterlines" at the Somerville Museum, in Somerville MA (USA) from December 2022 - March 2023, and now on display at The Metropolitan Waterworks Museum in Boston MA (USA) from May 2023 - November 2023. A collection of "objects with soundtracks", Seeking the Source uses water as a metaphor for intuition, and the tenacious persistence of the practice of dowsing in the modern world as a symbol of our capacity to retain and nurture intuitive understanding even while we rely on technologies and enlightenment-age logics for our day to day operations in a way that would seem to make intuition obsolete. 

The audio tracks here are soundtracks for 15 of the 17 objects that are on display at the museum. Their numbers map against the numbers accompanying each object.

The development of Seeking the Source has been supported by The Somerville Museum, Flux Factory, ARoS Museum, Useful Art for Communities, USF Bergen, and The Metropolitan Waterworks Museum.

Seeking the Source

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