CSF ambassadors
Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Rachel Carey, a senior communications major, joined the CSF's ambassador program in the fall quarter 2017. During her tenure as a CSF Ambassador, Rachel took a creative approach to telling the story of two CSF projects: the Life Science Building's Putting the Green in Greenhouse and the Campus Illumination sustainable lighting plan. She interviewed project leads and created interpretive paintings informed by the character of the project and the teams' anecdotes. Rachel has served as a leader and mentor with UW Leaders, interned at Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Activism (SARVA) and volunteered across a variety of student organizations. She describes painting as therapeutic and a way for her to help tell the story of causes, organizations, and everyday people. Her mission as an artist is to "provide her audience with new perspectives, inspired by everyday stories, to better mental health and encourage other's to share their stories with one another." For more on Rachel's work or to have her tell your organization's story, visit www.yourstorypainted.com

Awesome work Rachel! Do you have a creative idea for the CSF or are you interested in our Ambassador program? Contact our Outreach Coordinator Whisper St Christopher at uwcsf@uw.edu to discuss ways to get involved!

Rachel explans her paintings and the process behind them below:

“A guide to lighting the future” is inspired by the CSF project Campus Illumination and the incredible minds behind it. As we move towards a more sustainable future, this project acts as a roadmap to improving exterior campus lighting. After interviewing project leads Kelly Douglas and Christopher Meek, I really got a feel for their extraordinary campus-wide efforts, learning just how much careful thought was put into this project. It’s phenomenal that this road map takes into account the safety of people and minimizes wildlife migration interruptions, all while reducing the university’s electrical footprint through LED lighting. I was inspired to create this future of exterior lighting on a canvas by incorporating the interconnectivity of lights with the environment and also the people relying on those lights for guidance. I first found myself splattering stars, for it is the stars that naturally light the night, along with the moon. Along the skyline, you can see the university’s “W” and Seattle’s silhouette showing the origin of this project, a destination for others to turn to when they design exterior lighting efforts. The bright blues, oranges and yellows are Campus Illumination’s efforts implemented in the future. It’s their lighting that informs the way the silhouetted individual moves through time and space. Little does this individual know, there were great minds moving the sustainability effort along with retrofitted lights that ensure their safety while also working together with the respected environment. With such an innovative student-led project, I am so stoked to know that campus lighting will be protecting and informing us in the most sustainable way!

“The Future of Sustainability is Here” features two CSF projects being implemented into the future Life Sciences Building at UW Seattle, the solar and greenhouse projects, and is inspired by the amazing individuals behind them. After interviewing project leads Alexander Ratcliff and Robert Goff, with their respective teams including architecture firm Perkins+Will, I got a sense of the excitement and energy for the sustainability aspects of the Life Sciences Building. These individuals light up the room and I only felt it fit to start painting with bright colors to symbolize the brilliant minds involved in these projects. The color red in the top left corner symbolizes the abundant renewable solar energy being harnessed to power the Life Sciences Building. You can get a sense of where this energy is being harnessed from by the corresponding red in the painting, with rooftop photovoltaic solar panels and new state of the art integrated photovoltaic solar glass fins along the side of the office spaces. Something incredible to note is that any produced energy that is not needed to power the building will be sent to the city’s electrical grid! Moving on to the sustainable greenhouse implementations involves eliminating water waste. The Life Sciences Building redirects reverse osmosis/deionized (RO/DI) reject water from the building which would otherwise be sent to the sewer system and uses it to irrigate the greenhouse, which is represented by the blue water rooted on the lab section of the building and fills a large holding tank shown in the bottom right of the painting. This is revolutionary because usually this water would pass directly to the drain. As you move towards the bottom left of the painting, the water tank transitions to the many rare species of plants from all around the world that are housed in the greenhouse, thriving off of the reused water. With such innovative projects, the Life Sciences Building will be leading the way in sustainability efforts, bringing the future of building sustainably to the forefront. I’m so stoked to check out the Life Sciences Building when it’s finished with construction!