InLight: A Celebration of 1708 Art Gallery's 30 Years in Richmond Art

Psssst! Hey, y'all...
Come see some art!
C'mon! It's Richmond's InLight!

And for once I'm not going to gab (er, too much) but instead just letcha see it all. (And please, please click on the videos! They're dark but there's music! A New Orleans band doing Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healin'! Oh yessss, brother!)

What a celebration of art, community, and spirit in honor of 1708 Art Gallery's 30th Anniversary and the resurgence of art and vibrancy in Richmond through First Fridays!!!!

I'd like to point out that 1708 Art Gallery is a non-profit space that emphasizes art for art's sake and is not reliant on selling XYZ artist at XYZ commission.

How fortunate we are to have galleries where they have art... just for art. I appreciated *every* wonderful gallery I visited tonight. If you follow the links above you can read all about the participating artists.



As a green business who appreciates green art, I would like to specially mention Scott Kyle, whom I help (poorly) with Richmond Green Drinks. Scott is a green building architect (Full Scale Architecture), very talented, and gives back to our community in SO many ways. (His wife is equally talented & educated in sculpture, hence the ribbing in the above video.)

Scott created a beautiful, ethereal solar installation that... when I saw it...
It just made me happy, it made me think... "Ahhhh. Hope and light." Like twinkling fireflies.
Completely different than what I expected: I had expected whole panels alight.

Scott Kyle went for happy special moments, beaming dancing light as pedestrians passed, rays reaching out to touch all of us... that is some beautiful, solar powered, green ART!
This beautiful solar powered piece bequeaths the city a soulful improvement: Permanent art, that literally and spiritually shines.
(That's high praise comin' from a cranky woman.)

Beautiful work, Scott.

So, below, are some photographs *and* videos (from a cheap ole "you can take this in the rain" camera)- just for fun. Hope you enjoy. I know it's all takin' awhile to load, it's a post full o' ART! : ) It's worth it.

There was high-fashion Wearable Art, music, performance art (yay, Starr Foster Dance Company!) and just... great art everywhere, people smiling, children marveling, students striding... All despite Hurricane Hanna's approach and ensuing rain.

Hope y'all can stop by in person next time.
CONGRATULATIONS to all the participating galleries, artists, and through whom, through your hard work, you all make our community better and more vibrant.





By the way, I also picked up my painting, a painting I *had* to buy when, last time we attended First Friday, I had seen The Secret of Roan Inish the week prior. When I saw this painting... well, in my mind, these words spoke and I immediately bought it. The artist was there- and we talked about his art, and I mentioned how the painting reminded me so much of The Secret of Roan Inish. The irony was that the artist had never seen nor heard of the movie.
This painting means so, so much to me, my love of misfits, the awkward, wild hidden silkie inside all of us, living between the seal and human skins.

 

Evaluate your home for solar possibilities!

Here's a great tool I found that utilizes Google Maps to help you calculate the potential of your home for solar.

http://www.springwise.com/eco_sustainability/using_google_maps_to_calculate

RoofRay uses modeling tools, past weather data, and Google Maps to help consumers estimate how much potential their home could have for solar.

What a great way to evaluate your home's possibilities before taking the financial plunge to invest in solar energy!

 

Solar Cooking: Pork, Grapes & Garlic

It's been awhile since I've posted anything on solar cooking. I guess I just felt I hadn't made anything of note lately... when you solar cook, it IS convenient, but the novelty does wear off - I mean, how many people blog about what they make for dinner each day? (Suddenly a rush of web domains devoted to cooking overwhelms me! Never mind!)

For those of you on myspace, I have a whole album of solar cookin' successes (and failures), as well as posts in the green building group. But lately I've just been making... I don't know... normal stuff?

So today when I decided to "make something out of nothing" by looking through the icebox as I often do, I became a little more creative- and it occurred to me this dish could be photo-worthy. : )

In our family, we buy our meat from two families near us. That means we buy in bulk (I mean, when I buy lamb... I buy A lamb...) so our meat is usually frozen the day it's butchered. So I dug through the freezer and pulled out some beautiful pork chops from the Ault's, and defrosted them overnight. Then I found some grapes that the children were not devouring- they had been a little on the sour side. But if they were cooked? Dee-lish. So I threw in the chops, grapes, added cloves of garlic and a dash o' balsamic... and YUM! Tonight's dinner!

I also added a side o' potatoes. Solar cooked potatoes are frightfully easy and taste more earthy & delicious.

Feel free to try this at home! Cooking was never so easy- I'm off to play instead of hunkering over a hot oven: Let the sun do your work!

 

Solar Air Conditioning

As they say here in the south: "Myyyyyyyyyy it's hot!"

For weeks I've been ruminating over how to really cool an off grid house on those hot, dog day stretches of heat we get in Virginia. Despite the fact that our house kits are super insulated, passive solar and utilize the cross breeze, well, heck. Until you've spent a summer in the south, well, until you've spent a stifling, still, searing summer languishing on the cool floor 'cause you were too hot to stand... listlessly spraying little bursts of misted water towards yourself out of an old hairspray bottle 'cause that was the closest you could get to cool, where even the fans blew hot... where the still farm fields were so heavy with heat it knocked the air outta you and even the grasshoppers wouldn't even leap, where the... oh, ahem. Did I digress? Ok, fine. It's frickin' hot here, 'K? : )

So you see why I aspire to a cooler solution.

Today, when I heard about Sun Utility Network's California Dream System- Solar Electric Cooling and Heating Sunstation, I was intrigued.

Reading through, it makes sense! For our off grid house it could still work despite the electric piece as really, we wouldn't be aggressively cooling at night/when the sun was low. I will post more information on this system as I get it/have an opportunity to speak with them; in the meantime enjoy their website- http://www.sunutility.com, and...
I hope you all stay cool!

 

Solar Powerboats?

Ok, don't tell anyone, but I flat-out admit it:
As a sailor, I loathe powerboats.

I watch them speeding by with inept skiiers, waves crashing into my (no wake zone) dock, jarring and jostling my beloved boat... The high whine of the sea-doos as they zip about oncoming boats with no inkling of right-of-way much less port or starboard... UGH. The oily film they leave about the piers where they congregate... Ew, I'm making myself queasy when I think of it (or maybe it was last night's Green Drinks cocktails?)...

Any-hoo, to that segment of our seafaring population, I humbly submit:
The Solar-Powered Power Boat



Go check it all out (there's even a video) here:
http://ecoble.com/2008/04/15/awesome-solar-powered-bicycle-boat-design/

and make *sure* you visit the designer's site:
http://www.mj-design.fr/

 

Huh? Clean Coal? Remembering global change starts in our own back yard.

Huh? Clean Coal? Remembering global change starts in our own back yard.

Call me a geek (oh, yes I heard you!) but I have a green building group on myspace.

Normally I would never bring it up, it’s more of a diversion from work when my eyes start to criss-cross-- I then head over and drop a silly post on passive solar gardening (get it, a cold frame?) or take pictures of my latest solar cooking endeavor just to annoy the architects and engineers...

But two posts I would like to share for several reasons:

One, regarding a solar powered plant being built by Arizona Power, perked the interest of a thermotechnic engineer reader in Serbia.

Next thang ya know, I’m dialoging back and forth with a charming Renewable Energy dude from Arizona Power and the Serbian engineer as they ask each other questions... It really makes you think about the power we have to effect change in our world... and as I pondered those intricacies, I realized that the engineer’s questions regarding Arizona Public building a solar power plant reminded me that such technology and innovation is not national, not global, but that we need to apply and educate people within our own local back yards.

Here, in Virginia, there is a proposed "Clean Coal Power Station" in Wise County, Virginia.

Read Dominion Energy’s take on it here:

http://www.dom.com/about/stations/fossil/swva.jsp

...and opposition here:

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/149689
http://www.southernenvironment.org/cases/wise_county/index.htm
http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/news/news_detail.cfm?id=403
http://thegreenmiles.blogspot.com/2007/12/action-needed-help-stop-wise-county.html
(and more...)

With technology such as Arizona Power is implementing...
why are we even discussing coal?