SECTION FIVE
Innovation highlights the creativity and foresight of individuals and shows two groundbreaking establishments: Real Goods and Ukiah Brewing Company.
The Real Goods Solar Living Center in Hopland is depicted from an aerial view. It is still a vibrant center devoted to ecological living, being solar powered and a demonstration of permaculture practices. Source photos below:
Real Goods was founded in 1978 by John Schaeffer as a one-stop shop for off-grid living supplies in Northern California. It became the first commercial retailer of solar panels in the United States. The company began printing its influential mail order catalogue in 1985.
It’s a fun story that you can read here!
The business and the center experienced change over time but in 2018 John Schaeffer bought back the retail catalogue and the Solar Living Center. John had re-dedicated himself and the company to the mission of local control and innovation. Read the Ukiah Daily Journal article here.
In the photo of the entire section below, notice the continuity of landscape and sky, but also of some shapes from one panel to the next. For example, see how Factory Pipe in manufacturing leads your gaze into the scenes in innovation to the right.
One day in 1999 Bret Cooperider asked his parents Allen and Els to start a brew pub with him. Bret had brewing experience and Els Cooperider was a scientist and environmental activist. She insisted the operation be organic. Thus Ukiah Brewing Company became the first certified organic brewpub in the United States.
Look closely at the painted signage over the back door where Els is walking in. Details done in pencil!
In my source photo of Bret Cooperider cleaning copper tanks you see that open back door where he and Els walked in with meat, produce and supplies thousands of times.
“Running a restaurant is an incredible amount of work. I “broke down” a total of 54 organic beef carcasses. When we first started, we had to make our own organic mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard because they weren’t available yet. It requires a lot of dedication. You hardly get any time off, especially mentally. We survived and flourished for almost 12 years, but it wasn’t easy. It was an incredible experience and it was great working with our kids. We must have done something right. Would I do it again? No. And after 12 years it was time to let go, so we sold.”
Els Cooperider in the Anderson Valley Advertiser “Mendocino Talking: Els Cooperrider” Sept. 4 2014
All that hard work produced a landmark and the legacy of UBC is enormous. In the source photo for the bar scene below you see subsequent owners Chris Struett and Taylor Pedersen who restored the business in 2018. (Ukiah Daily Journal story) Thus they were depicted serving beer behind the bar…
…serving beer to locals Tamar Kaye, Christine Poremski Rodrigues and Lee Rodrigues. Tamar and her husband Crispin Cain run the combined small craft Tamar Distillery/Mendocino Spirits. (Their product is seen at the bottom of the manufacturing panel.)
On the day I took source photos at UBC, Crispin couldn’t join us and was disappointed. So I painted a tiny portrait of him in the doorway behind them. The empty chair with a full beer in the source photo was actually mine, but here it works perfectly as his!
UBC has undergone another ownership change, now led by Tyler Booth and brewmaster Keith Feigin (who was also a founder of Black Oak Coffee.) Here is Keith attending to one of the magical substances he is an expert in:
What is below UBC?
Two more illustrations of innovation are a young computer coder working remotely from home (notice the bare feet, working on his bed!) and a woman charging her electric vehicle. But first, let me show you something I painted UNDER that scene.
In July of 2021 it was my beloved Mom Audrey Sinnott’s 93rd birthday and she was far away in Wisconsin with my sisters. I was painting in Ukiah, visiting with my son Adrian and great friends Ling-Yen Jones and Jon Handel, who also love my mom. I painted her a birthday wish on the mural which of course would be painted over later, but still will always be there as long as the building stands. We sent her the pictures of us wishing her a fabulous birthday!
Soon after, I started painting the portraits of the computer coder and of Janet Orth who works in regional transportation promoting electric vehicles.
Janet Orth began work in 1996 for Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) which is our regional transportation planning body. (There’s one in every California county.) She had a background in environmental advocacy and recognized that renewable energy was our future. She was ahead of the curve in planning for electric vehicles, leading a team that did ride-and-drive events, made presentations in schools, and put planners, engineers and elected officials behind the wheel.
Progress wasn’t a smooth trajectory however, especially with major pushback from the oil and auto industries. But California didn’t give up and by 2012 the county’s efforts were back on track, with the major change being a shift from public to corporate charging networks. The 20-member ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) Advisory Group updated their plan, which you can see here. MCOG has a page with EV charging station maps. Read Janet’s account of this administrative adventure here:
Now back to that computer coder, working at home on his bed.
He’s had a breakthrough with the app he is creating. The model was my son Ian Sinnott, an independent coder and entrepreneur. Here he is posing:
That light green expanse between Ian and Janet looks cool, but it would soon be filled with Ian’s code and MCOG’s EV plans. First, I painted a cascade of ZEV planning documents from 1996 to 2019. The smallest lettering is done in pencil, difficult on this rough surface!
Ian was developing an app called Persistory that would act like an internal Google, allowing you to search among all of your own digital activity. Here you see the app’s front end – its appearance on screen as it is introduced to Ukiah – along with the code itself!
There are a lot of coding languages and the one he used here is called Clojure. Most people wouldn’t recognize it, but one day an observant viewer did just that!
One last little note: Ian is painted right next to his brother Adrian in the manufacturing panel, both depicted doing great work from home!
Here are both panels complete:
Next panel, which starts the next section: