The following text accompanies an installation I made as part of the NOMO Exhibition we’ve designed and curated as the culmination of our residency at Kohler Arts. Over the past few weeks I’ve made fictional, yet plausible sculptural elements that support the idea that surfing has origins on the Great Lakes. I will provide more detail soon about the NOMO Exhibition, but here’s a preview of my “Legend of Lumberjack Surfing” installation:

The Legend of Lumberjack Surfing

“There is a little known legend that surfing has early 19^th century origins on the Western shores of Lake Michigan, separate from its more ancient roots on the islands of the South Pacific.

When timber rafts were floated down Wisconsin’s rivers to be shipped to far off urban centers, large slabs of wood occasionally broke loose along the lake and washed ashore. Enterprising lumberjacks and boat-builders often rescued the timbers by drifting them offshore, standing atop them and paddling them to beachfront workshops, occasionally attaching sails to ease the journey. When the surf was heavy, the maritime lumberjacks beached the timbers by riding waves to shore, steering with a long wooden paddle. Over time, the activity of riding waves became an end in itself, and the ‘lumberjack surfers’ learned to shape the rough sawn planks for better performance in the waves.

By the early 20^th century, the ‘lumberjack surfers’ adapted wooden boards to ride on land by attaching crude wheels to their undersides, thus inventing an early form of the skateboard. Many of these ‘trapper’s skateboards’ were made from stretchers originally used to tan wolf hides. By the middle of the 20^th century, experimental skateboards were commonly made from discarded, wooden alpine and water skis, which were rapidly being replaced by fiberglass.”

Another part of the NOMO Exhibition at Kohler Arts features longboard skate graphics I designed collaboratively, like the Northern Pike Longboard (above) drawn by Mary Whitehall and Zak Worth. The burnt/etched deck is part of a series depicting fish native to Lake Michigan

Tagged: appropriate technology, bike culture, contemporary art, craft philosophy, deep craft, DIY, furniture design, green design, innovation, kohler arts, longboard, public art, scott Constable, skateboard, slow design, surfing, sustainability, tall tale, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, woodworking, wowhaus

We rode in the 4th of July parade to promote the NOMO concept

Our first week back at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center was action packed as we laid the groundwork for the NOMO EXPO. A part of our project as artists in residence is simply to promote the ‘NOMO’ concept, a word/logo we invented as a contraction of ‘non-motorized transportation’. It’s been wonderful collaborating with the Kohler Arts Center, who made NOMO banners to promote the project, which were carried in Sheboygan’s well-attended 4th of July parade.

one of two skate decks by Zak Worth, which we commissioned for the exhibition

Sheboygan artist Michelle Ann Miller crochets baskets and panniers from plastic bags

The ‘pop-a-wheelie’ bike, made by  Sage, a 12 year old boy who lives in Madison

Tagged: appropriate technology, deep craft, DIY, green design, innovation, kohler arts, nomo, public art, scott Constable, skateboard, wowhaus

I made these lightweight panniers from salvaged materials for my Dahon folding bike

After our cross-country trek and a long overdue visit with family on the East Coast, Ene and I arrived in Sheboygan late last week for the final three weeks of our residency at Kohler Arts. We’ve settled into the guest cottage at the James Tellen Sculpture Garden, about 6 miles south of the town center, and a short walk to the sandy shores of Lake Michigan.

As we curate our NOMO exhibition and lay the groundwork for the NOMO EXPO, I’ve been commuting to town on my trusty Dahon folding bike. Over the weekend, I made a set of panniers when we hosted a public ‘Bike Bling’ workshop at the Kohler Art Center’s ARTery. The panniers consist of a lashed wooden frame, zip-tied to my rack, and saddle bags made from a recycled exterior banner, with duct-taped seams. While my panniers are intended to be temporary, they are surprisingly strong and lightweight, and I’m hoping the prototype will be improved upon by others during the EXPO.

To read more about our residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: appropriate technology, bike culture, contemporary art, craft, deep craft, DIY, green design, innovation, panniers, public art, scott Constable, wowhaus

Jefferson planted ‘mad dog’ at Monticello, brought from the West by Lewis and Clark

Ene and I had made three cross-country road trips before our most recent family pilgrimage. The first three punctuated a single year almost twenty years ago, when we negotiated a move from the East Coast to California. We made an exploratory trek through Canada, up into Alaska’s panhandle and down the pacific coast, then a meandering southern ramble back east across the southwest and the Deep South, and finally, a no-nonsense westward beeline traversing the middle, our stuff in tow. Despite dissimilarities, I think of each journey as a rite of passage, a chance to drop everything, check the pulse of American life and open up to the happenstance of the open road.

Twenty years later, as we zig-zagged our way back East across the continent, I realized what a Californian perspective I’ve gained, especially since our move from Oakland to the wild Sonoma Coast. Traveling east to west, ‘nature’ is interpreted through the abstract filters of ‘culture’. I found the opposite to be the case as we car-camped our way over the Sierras, across the desert and into the ancient canyons leading into the Rockies, down to the High Plains and over the Mississippi River to the ‘old country’, back into Culture.

postcards depicting Elvis’ Graceland abound inside the site’s many gift shops

Being short on time and long on ideas, we decided to organize the last leg of our eastbound journey around just two sequential destinations, Graceland and Monticello. Both paragons of American domestic architecture, albeit for nearly opposite reasons, the two iconic homesteads present the polarity of American civilization. In many ways, Jefferson invented the West, and Monticello both anticipates and celebrates its utopian origins and vast potential. Elvis is more a victim than a victor of a more contemporary fame, and his architectural opus, unlike Monticello, is a dystopic retreat from public life, more like the prototype for today’s exurbs. Both celebrity sites share a Southern love of neoclassicism, which lends itself naturally to kitsch.

However crude its manifestation, it is ultimately up to Public Taste to preserve assets of nature and culture, both low and high.

Tagged: aesthetics, cross country, deep craft, elvis, geography, graceland, monticello, road trip, vernacular architecture

satellite view of the village of Nicasio, CA, built around a baseball diamond

Driving the back way from our studio on the Sonoma Coast to Marin County to install a project over the past few months, I’ve fallen in love with the village of Nicasio. Its tiny town center consists of a church, a general store, a roadhouse/bar, post office, Druid’s Hall, real estate office, and a few houses, all surrounding a baseball diamond that comprises the Town Square. Nestled in the San Geronimo Valley, Nicasio connects the main drainages of Nicasio Creek and its tributaries up to the ridgelines. The buildings are all authentic examples of late 19^th century rural American vernacular, all the more poignant when the focal point is a well-maintained baseball diamond.

Nicasio’s classic Town Square is a baseball diamond

dairy cattle graze around St. Mary’s Church, which flanks the baseball diamond

Outbuildings like this are still in use and shine when the Buckeye blooms

Ancient black locust trees dwarf this charming cottage on Nicasio’s Town Square

Tagged: baseball, california coast, deep craft, nicasio, scott Constable, sonoma coast, town square, vernacular architecture, watershed

sometimes I make up songs during a long walk

There is no better design tool than a good long walk. It may not always lead to creative breakthroughs, but does reliably clear the noggin and put things in perspective. Before I begin to think about a particular project during a walk, I usually find myself simply getting into the cadence and breathing of walking, sometimes making up phrases and melodies to help me focus. Whether or not I make progress with the project at hand, I always return to the studio feeling relaxed and optimistic, eager to field the inevitable challenges of the day.

Tagged: craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, woodworking

Living and working in West Africa many years ago, we learned to Greet the Elders

When Ene and I worked in West Africa as US Peace Corps Volunteers, we developed some habits that still inform our community-based projects. Principal among these is a kind of public ritual we call Greet the Elders. In remote villages, before introducing a new idea like a fuel efficient woodstove or method of filtering water, let alone seeing it adopted and integrated, it’s key to follow a certain protocol, at once formal and convivial. It always begins by meeting with the village’s key decision makers- the tribal chief and other elders, market women, the village shaman and sometimes a government official. These greetings could easily last all day and into the night, taking place either in French or Konkomba, a regional language we struggled to use for the basics. The most relevant information would be exchanged through a ritual call-and-response series of questions about the ‘news’ of the day, ranging from one’s health to the crops, the animals, the children and the neighbors, all without making eye contact while loosely shaking hands, nodding and bowing,

“Ajoko-poya?”, “Alafia”, “Amonko-poya?”, “Alafia!”, “Ditunde-poya?”, “Alafia-weh”, “eh-HENHH!”

After the exchange of news, the bonds of trust would be sealed by spending the remaining day together, eating fufu and drinking chukatuh, then dancing together into the night to the ‘mento’ beat of Ashanti drums.

Our latest Wowhaus public art project, designing a system of ‘watershed markers’ for the City of Oakland, is a good example of how the final product relates to the process of engaging with the community. Although Ene and I have strong ideas about the importance of maintaining a healthy ‘watershed’ in an urban environment, we approached the project with very open minds, not knowing if the general population of any city necessarily knows what ‘watershed’ means. In a kind of sponge mode, we randomly surveyed people in diverse neighborhoods about what images and symbols connote water and stream ecology. We shared our findings with Oakland residents invited to public meetings, and learned more about how regular people think of the idea of a ‘watershed’. We were surprised to hear similar stories across cultural and economic spectra, boiling down to childhood memories about playing in urban creeks, turning over rocks to discover life teeming beneath, and finding ways to cross the stream.

in-process detail of one of four relief sculptures in clay and stone, to be cast in bronze

We decided to make a series of ‘stepping stones’ to capture this spirit, to be cast in bronze and embedded in concrete paving over culverts where creeks have been diverted. Ene has made great progress sculpting these ‘stepping stones’ in clay. We have a sequence of four, which can be arranged in any order, and will be sited at Oakland’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfares, drawing attention to the hidden creeks and waterways draining to the Bay.

To read more about the wowhaus ‘watershed markers’ for the City of Oakland, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: appropriate technology, craft philosophy, deep craft, innovation, Oakland, public art, wowhaus

I made my ‘indoor sawhorses’ to double as a table base

In all my years working with wood I’ve never felt the need to own or build a proper workbench. For a long time, I simply lacked the dedicated space and opted instead for working mostly outside, preferring to stage my work on sawhorses and collapsible building jigs tailored to a particular use. The scraps from one project would have an afterlife as the rudimentary furnishings to make the next. During the rainy season, projects would occasionally migrate indoors, so I made sawhorses as though they were furniture (pictured above). The prolonged lack of a dedicated bench opened up my thinking to the kinds of projects I would consider taking on, and I learned how limitations can be liberating.

To me, there’s also something inherently a little sad about a workbench. Like a well-intended New Year’s resolution, a workbench tends to be over-built and under-used, its function shifting too easily from utility to burden. Sawhorses, on the other hand, take up very little space, and both their construction and use are perpetually open to interpretation. Now that I have more space than I ever imagined, I still opt for sawhorses over workbench, a strategy more in keeping with the ever-fluctuating scope and scale of my projects.

Here are some ideal characteristics of good sawhorses:

• Lightweight
• Strong enough to stand on
• Stacking
• Flexible enough to conform to uneven surfaces
• Able to live outdoors for extended periods
• Constructed of recycled or scrap lumber

However you plan to use it, the most important feature of a good sawhorse is that it be owner-built; designing and making a sawhorse is the perfect, first furniture project.

Tagged: craft philosophy, deep craft, DIY, furniture design, sawhorse, scott Constable, woodworking

Our NOMO logo was designed by Sheboygan-based tattoo artist, Steven Bossler

Ene and I (aka wowhaus) are gearing up for a cross-country, family road trip, the final destination being the final, three week leg of our residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 6/27- 7/18. Somewhat ironically, the focus of our project is non-motorized transportation, which we’ve contracted into the catchier moniker, ‘NOMO’. During our residency, we will be setting up an outdoor NOMO Studio under a tent on the grounds of Kohler Arts, where we will work collaboratively with the community to interpret and celebrate NOMO culture in the region, culminating in a day-long exposition and related gallery exhibition, that will remain open to the public for the remainder of the summer.

We’ve already laid the groundwork for the body of work we plan to produce and are looking forward to pulling it all together in true wowhaus style. To promote the project, we asked Steven Bossler, a Sheboygan-based tattoo artist, to contribute his take on a NOMO graphic identity (see above). The NOMO logo will be featured on all print materials, and we will be giving away NOMO tattoo decals during our residency. We will continue to tap the creative energies of the citizens of Sheboygan throughout the process as we explore alternative modes of transportation in the region.

Tagged: bike culture, contemporary art, deep craft, DIY, innovation, kohler arts, nomo, public art, scott Constable, vernacular, wowhaus

Greens Restaurant manager Mike Hale helps unload and install 140 Greens Chairs

Early this week I delivered 140 newly minted, Greens Chairs I designed specifically for San Francisco’s Greens Restaurant in honor of its 30^th anniversary and subsequent interior renovation. Fourteen of the chairs are made of walnut and will surround a functional sculpture by J.B. Blunk (1926-2002), dating to the restaurant’s origins. The commission came to me through my friend Mariah Nielson, J.B.’s daughter, who runs the J.B. Blunk Residency and was hired to consult about how best to honor the carved, massive redwood sculpture, in keeping with its contemporary surroundings. The other chairs are made of maple to compliment handmade tables and furnishings crafted by Paul Discoe and other artisans associated with the San Francisco Zen Center in the late 1970’s.

My design for the Greens Chair evolved from my Elder Chair, a design I originally prototyped for the School Lunch Initiative associated with Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley. The Greens Chair was inspired as much by the Buddhist ethos of its namesake restaurant as by the restaurant’s dramatic setting on the Bay, with views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

As Greens Restaurant manager Mike Hale helped unpack the chairs, they happily basked in the California sun and were kissed by a stiff sea breeze coming off the Bay, before finding their way home inside the iconic restaurant at Fort Mason. I’m very proud of my chair’s uniquely Bay Area pedigree and hope to see it become a contemporary classic.

To read more about the development of the Greens Chair, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: alice waters, deep craft, edible schoolyard, furniture design, golden gate bridge, greens restaurant, jb blunk, mariah nielson, paul discoe, san francisco zen center, scott Constable, slow design, slow food, windsor chair, woodworking