Silicon Valley Artist Releases “Sustainability”: Inspired By NASA’s Sustainability Base
Menlo Park, CA: On April 19–20 NASA Ames, Moffett Field, California, with the help of Bay Area Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, will dedicate NASA’s new building Sustainability Base—one of the greenest buildings in the nation and unlike any other government building ever created. Using NASA innovations originally engineered for space travel and exploration, the 50,000 square-foot, lunar-shaped Sustainability Base is simultaneously a working office space, a showcase for NASA technology and an evolving exemplar for the future of buildings.
Artist Michael Killen this month released his new painting “Sustainability” (24 x 5 feet) inspired by NASA’s endeavor to provide a new exemplar for the future of buildings in the nation and the world. Demetra J. McBride, Director, Climate Action & Sustainability, County Executive’s Office, Santa Clara County introduced Michael and his new painting at an event hosted and filmed by the Midpeninsula Community Media Center, Palo Alto, California. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGPDjuLbkI4
Killen had been intrigued by sustainability—the spirit thought, management imperative, voice of the planet—whose “voice” is increasingly being heard today throughout the of the US, but not as much as in Europe, and certainly not as much as in the developing nation where it warns of survivability if not heeded. When Steve Hipskind, Chief of Earth Science, NASA Ames, recommended that Michael make a painting for the new building he accepted the challenge, which took him a little over a year to complete.
“I accepted this challenge painting on sustainability because I felt the voice of sustainability might resonate more effectively with voters than the voice of climate change which many voters especially the Republican dispute, or the multiple voices of energy– with none having primacy–making it impossible, at this time, an energy sprit of times to emerge. I hoped my painting would help give politicians the cover they needed to step up their efforts to promote policies that lead to increase energy efficiency and the transformation to energy types that were renewable and clean.
Michael had previously painted the spirit of the times–climate change—a series of seven paintings that include “Climate Change for the Wealthy,” “Climate Change for the Rest of Us,“ “End of Oil” and the “The Last Ship Out.” He has also painted “Impact of the Internet on Civilization,” “The Beginning After the End,” “Evolution of Consciousness” and “I Did Not See the Time Go By.”
Café Borrone, Menlo Park, will present a series of paintings by Killen and Harry Cohen inspired by the need to protect the San Francisco Bay from the development of the salt flats at Redwood City, April 16–May 27. Killen is presently seeking sponsors for the next zeistgiust he plans to paint—“The End of the Combustible Engine”—and to have this large scale painting ready to be viewed during the America’s Cup 2013 in San Francisco.
Governments, foundations, Universities, and other organizations' Climate Change Action Persuasion Strategies have made progress appealing to people's logic. 