In hard times, humans have persevered. Plumbob is a part of the wave of sustainability moving all over the world right now. Plumbob is taking aim at the inefficiencies of how we build our living, working, and learning structures by re-discovering passive solar principles and re-aligning community to live by the Sun as an energy foundation. Our society is hanging on the question; "What will we leave the next generation?"

Public

This post is accompanying my first art installation in almost 10 years; a series of picture frames I designed, built, and hung at the Coffee Society in Cupertino California. The picture frames are made from salvaged 2x4s from various local structures that were being remodeled with new materials. This wood would otherwise be taking space in our landfills, becoming the next generations problem. I would like to replace the photos in the frames frequently to keep things interesting. The photos are simply interesting images from my personal collection.

Plumbob

I want to use some of my work to get more public with my main pursuit. I am developing Plumbob to catalyze a shift towards re-designing/building single-family homes to be oriented to maximize the sun's energy that reaches us every day. A small example; currently we rely on electricity for most of our daytime lighting, where passive solar design would open up the roof to the Sun's light during the day. It's more efficient, and it's more inspiring and healthy to live, learn, and work in.

Passive solar structures build community

In times of economic insecurities, the most important thing we can do, and maybe the only catalyst for real change, is building community that cares for each other. And I believe there is no better vehicle to carry community building than participating in building a passive solar structure. Combined with local organic agriculture and all the primary education standards we hold our society to can be mapped to this process. And if we consider the stock of single family homes in this country that could potentially be rebuilt, we have a perfectly sized canvas for Americans to blaze a trail of an innovative education opportunity, inter-generational care, a sensible energy foundation, and a commerce frontier.

Becoming a Business

I am currently working on making Plumbob a business. The suggested donation value of the picture frames will be used for business form filing fees and time spent making Plumbob a non-profit organization.

Buy on ETSY

Picture opening: 4x6 inches
Comes with hanging hardware attached for horizontal orientation, sturdy 1/8 inch glass, and a snug-fit cardboard backing.
**The art inside the frames are free under a creative commons Attribution Share-Alike license. The images are simply from my own experience and that I thought would be good eye-candy for a coffee shop. I will not include images with frames.**

Homage to the coffee shop

FInally, since I have taken a new plunge into coffee shop culture, I'd like to give a plug to a good friend's writings about some of said culture. The link below contains PDF downloads of all the chapters, where he writes about the culture and psychology of sustainability in his first book, "Cracks in the Pavement". Towards the bottom there is a link to a chapter entitled "Homage to the Coffee Shop". Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys their time at their local shop!
http://www.cracksinthepavement.net/