Learning from the Murmur

I was lucky to catch the last rays of early September sun glistening off the ornately glazed tiles and finials of downtown Oakland’s deco treasures; the building facades just drink up this light, colors saturated against a deep azure sky. I had arrived on bike just as the Murmur was setting up, bought tickets at […]

Lakeside Green Streets Research

Ene and Aili chat it up with local residents on the shores of Lake Merritt. We’ve been spending a lot of time roaming the shores of Oakland’s Lake Merritt as we enter the research phase of our public art commission for the City of Oakland’s Lakeside Green Streets initiative. Our project is to be integrated […]

Snow Park Public Art Finalists

The lakefront block of 20th Street will be converted to a pedestrian promenade. Wowhaus are finalists in the public art component of an ambitious restructuring of Snow Park and the surrounding waterfront of Lake Merritt in the City of Oakland. Once again, we’re thrilled at the opportunity to contribute to the geography of public life, […]

Final Oakland Installation Dispatch

Lake Merritt, looking towards the Northeast James and I completed the lenticular murals yesterday by clear-coating them with a  protective, anti-graffiti glaze. Touching every square inch of the surface of the images reminded me how much the tiles have been handled over the past eight months, how much care has gone into realizing a hand […]

Oakland Installation Dispatch

I’m falling in love with Oakland all over again. Ene and I moved here from the East Coast in 1991 after a formative time living in West Africa, followed by meandering road trips cross-country, capped off with a season of commercial fishing on a salmon seiner in Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago. We spent our ‘crew share’ […]

Oakland Estuary Project

Lake Merritt, downtown Oakland Ene and I are honored to be among the finalists under consideration to design a system of watershed markers for the City of Oakland, CA. We spent the morning meeting with stakeholders at the head of Lake Merritt, where several creeks converge and drain into the natural lake/estuary. The group studied […]