I use all of may favorite hand tools to shape my first surfboard.

These late summer evenings I’ve been enjoying dropping into a state of loose focus as I shape my first surfboard from a slab of air-dried cottonwood. An aroma reminiscent of farm animals wafts up as my plane curls ribbons of excelsior. I tested this wood’s properties many years ago when I carved the seat of my prototype Captain’s Chair, a send-off on the traditional Windsor. The grain tears easily and has a fibrous, papery quality, but it is very stable, dense and tough to split. Plus it has a low ’specific gravity’ (0.38) which means it floats well. I’m especially enjoying returning to the simple hand tools that got me started experimenting with furniture making in my twenties- a jigsaw, an assortment of spokeshaves and drawknives, various hand planes, scoops and gouges.

When shaping, I’m thinking about wave dynamics and the performance of a hull when static and when under rapid acceleration and how water will propel forces upon the board from all directions. I’m mindful to leave enough material for adequate buoyancy, but am carving concavities to mimic the way I round my shoulders when body-surfing, my arms pinned to my sides like steering rails, my feet digging in for balance. I hope to have my first surfboard ready to launch when the south swell returns to Doran.

The south swell returns to Doran after the first storms of autumn

Tagged: california coast, deep craft, longboard, olo, scott Constable, sonoma coast, surfing, windsor chair, woodworking

Ene and me reflected in Anish Kapoor’s ‘Bean’ sculpture, Chicago, earlier this summer

Before I launch full bore into documenting A Year in Surf I wanted to update current wowhaus projects. I will maintain a running log of projects as they accumulate, but will soon shift the focus of deepcraft to my active pursuit of surfing. I think you’ll agree that surf culture is in many ways a unifying theme to the thrust of past and present wowhaus projects, which increasingly focus on watershed ecology, structural invention and making beautiful things and places.

Our fish sculptures (’Abundance‘) are coming to life as they are skinned with tile

Our wax ‘Stepping Stones’ are ready to be cast in bronze for our Oakland Watershed Marker Project

We’ve selected sites to install our ‘Stepping Stones’ relief sculptures, drawing attention to Oakland’s many hidden creeks comprising a complex, urban watershed

Conference Table for the managing offices of  ‘Marin County Mart’ (photo taken when the conference room was under construction)

I recently designed this conference table for the offices of Jim Rosenfield, owner of Marin Country Mart. The design developed collaboratively from concept sketches by Jim, with proportional and color consultation from Greg Turpan, who has been instrumental in defining the look and feel of the innovative shopping center. The table is 10 feet long and 34″ wide with 4 x 4 legs in solid Claro walnut. The top is lightweight for its size, being a hollow ‘torsion box’ with a honeycomb core of 1/4″ plywood making an internal grid of 3″ squares. To make a seamless surface on all six sides, the top is skinned with full length panels of MDF, with ‘folded miter’ corners. The top is finished on all sides with six layers of catalyzed urethane, hand-polished to a high gloss. I borrowed from hollow surfboard construction when conceiving the table. I’ve enjoyed working with Jim and Greg on the project and am honored to contribute to Marin Country Mart, which is fast becoming a major Bay Area icon.

Meanwhile, I’m nearing completion of a residential interior I’ve designed and built in Marin County, and permits are in place and construction is underway on an ‘Observation Tower’ I recently designed for a rural property in Sonoma County. Photos to follow soon!

Tagged: deep craft, furniture design, greg turpan, innovation, marin country mart, Oakland, public art, scott Constable, wowhaus

Whether you consider it precaution or precognition, sometimes it makes sense to change things up just when they appear to be running smoothly. I feel very fortunate that my hard work over the years has earned me the luxury of making a living doing pretty much exactly what I want to do, some of which I’ve archived on these pages and on the wowhaus website. But at a certain point, no matter how intriguing or germane, work is just work, and its rewards are tempered by the usual stress and uncertainty of earning a living.

The trade-off for having successfully integrated the idea of ‘leisure’ into my art and design practice is that I’ve also managed to eliminate it from my daily life, and am beginning to feel the effects. So I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to pursue leisure as a necessary adjunct to my work, and will be shifting the subject and tone of my Deep Craft weblog accordingly.

Beginning September 1, 2010, I plan to devote a calendar year to the daily pursuit of surfing, whether on the water, building boards, getting in shape or doing research. Our studio compound is just 11 miles from a gentle fall/winter break, and about 15 miles from two major year-round breaks. I come to surfing as a lifelong bodysurfer, woodworker and beach lover. My plan is to learn to surf by shaping my first board from solid wood, and then develop my technique through ongoing experimentation. I hope you will stay tuned as I embark on ‘A Year in Surf’ and attempt to keep a daily log on these pages.

Tagged: california coast, contemporary art, deep craft, longboard, scott Constable, sonoma coast, surfing, woodworking, wowhaus

We tested my Greens Chair at Greens Restaurant over a four course dinner

On the eve of our first full week home after six weeks of travel, Ene, Aili and I celebrated with a prix fixe, four course dinner at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. Mike Hale, Greens’ manager, generously comped the meal as a gesture of thanks for the chairs I recently designed that now populate the restaurant’s expansive interior.

My lovely ladies enjoying a delicious dinner, as the sun set over the Golden Gate

By all accounts, the chairs are a tremendous success, adding a touch of structure and formality to the dining experience without detracting from its casual simplicity or bohemian legacy. More importantly, we got to test the chairs over an elegant, beautifully prepared and presented vegetarian feast, and they proved to be perfectly comfortable all the way through coffee and dessert. The Greens Chair is the first furniture commission at this scale where I have not actually made the furnishings myself, hadn’t touched and shaped each piece of wood with my own hands, yet I was pleased to feel the same pride of authorship as if I had.

Most of the Greens Chairs are made of maple, with just 16 in walnut

As we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on our way back up the coast in the lingering twilight, while Ene snoozed and Aili surfed her iPod, I began to reflect upon the relationship between craft and design, content with the fruits of my labor. I’m called more and more frequently to shift roles between maker and designer, and I find it helps to make a smooth transition by keeping a foot in either world.

the view from our table at Greens, looking West towards the Golden Gate

‘Craft’ is too broad a term for consensus on its meaning, which can range from implying a level of skill in handiwork, to standing in for pre-industrial technologies, to being a kind of hobby or therapy. For the sake of clarity, I think of ‘craft’ more as an artisanal production model, connoting things made using local resources- material, knowledge, and energy. In such a craft-based production model, ‘design’ is often an afterthought. The final thing more or less emerges from the constraints of tradition and the limitations of resources. Most products of this system live in the past- the Windsor Chair, basket-making, vernacular architecture in general- but they still influence the visual culture of design. From this perspective, ‘craft’ and ‘design’ are mutually exclusive.

While craft is a bottom-up strategy, design is a top-down one. Design most often begins with a visual representation of a thing to be made, but exactly how it is made is incidental to its final manifestation. When called to design something made at an industrial scale, I begin the process by thinking as a traditional artisan might, given the resources of labor and technology in today’s world. I don’t have any preconception of how anything will look, but trust in an ethos of Exuberant Frugality. I try to optimize material and structure, nest functions and eliminate waste, knowing that this will make room for quality to emerge at all stages of a design’s development, and that the ethos will resonate with anyone who works with their hands.

Tagged: aesthetics, chair design, craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, greens restaurant, innovation, scott Constable, slow food, traditional craft, vernacular architecture, windsor chair, woodworking

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