Hoshigaki

nearly ripe Hachiya Persimmon, ready to be peeled and hung to dry Looking up at the persimmon tree’s wild constellation of fruit still languidly dangling, you’d hardly know we already picked over two bushels for drying. Ene recently discovered the Japanese art of Hoshigaki, a technique of drying fruit by a combination of open-air hanging […]

The Week in Bloom

Hachiya persimmon are ripening early this year The raccoons have commenced their furtive nighttime raids on the persimmon tree, whose fruits are prematurely ripe by a few weeks. We’re still trying to figure out how best to use the hundreds of Hachiya persimmon produced by our single tree each winter, and have been picking and […]

Kohler Arts Dispatch

To help research content for our project as artists in residence at Kohler Arts Center, one of the students at Etude School in Sheboygan has created a website to document and archive all things related to the culture of non-motorized transportation in the region. Working collaboratively under the direction of wowhaus, a team of high […]

In Praise of the Bead Plane

Around the autumn equinox is typically our hottest, driest time of year, with golden brown fields and chalk dry dust under the orchard trees, now barren after harvest. The tips of the redwood branches have turned an orange-y yellow, and happily soak up the sea fog of a rare night. I can feel the rains […]

Collaborative Agitprop

Scoping a site for Watershed Field Research in Fruitvale One of the most rewarding aspects of a collaborative working relationship is that both the relationship and the work it produces tend to improve over time. Whenever Ene and I (aka wowhaus) perform field research for one of our public projects, we pay as close attention […]

Bicycle Composter Comes Home

Ene spins the composter above our vegetable garden MIX, our bike-powered compost tumbler, has found a final home on the Wowhaus compound, perched atop what remains of a pool deck, above our vegetable garden. The tumbler quickly breaks down our kitchen scraps, mixed with ashes and sawdust, and dumps the mixture into a garden bed […]

Rooftop Lizard Habitat

Artist Mark Brest van Kempen explains his water catchment/recycling system We spent an inspiring evening yesterday at the home of our friend Mark Brest van Kempen, an Oakland-based artist whose work “draws our attention to nature’s role as source, setting and savior“. Mark’s house and studio are a kind of living laboratory nestled in the […]