Location: Oakland, CA / Sonoma County, CA
Medium: Public art, sculpture, social practice, architecture, furniture design
Website: thewowhaus.com
Wowhaus is a trans-disciplinary art and design collaborative founded in 1997 by Scott Constable and Ene Osteraas-Constable, who are partners in life and work. The team — which also includes Project Strategist Aili Osteraas-Constable — maintains studios in Oakland and on three-plus acres in Sonoma County, and has created permanent and temporary public art across the United States for over two decades. Their work spans large-scale sculpture, social practice, community-engaged installation, architecture, and furniture design. Both founders served as Peace Corps Volunteers in West Africa in 1990–91, an experience that remains foundational to their community-centered practice.
Scott Constable studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, concentrating in Sculpture and Generative Systems. He was the 2010 Wornick Distinguished Professor of Wood Arts at California College of the Arts, and has been artist-in-residence at Grizedale Arts (UK), Mildred’s Lane (Pennsylvania), and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Wisconsin). He is also the founder of Deep Craft, a long-running weblog on craft-based research and practice. Ene Osteraas-Constable received her BFA from the University of Massachusetts and has received two Creative Work Fund Grants and an Oakland Individual Artist’s Grant. Before founding Wowhaus, she was the first Program Coordinator for the Edible Schoolyard, working with Alice Waters to establish the seminal Berkeley school gardening program, and previously worked at the Public Art Fund in New York, co-producing the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the Bryant Park Festival.
Wowhaus describes itself as a pioneer in socially-engaged practice, and their work consistently bears that out. Each project begins from deep site-specific research — ecological, historical, and cultural — that shapes the form, material, and community involvement of the final piece. Rather than imposing a signature aesthetic, Wowhaus develops a visual language for each site: glass mosaic fish for a library near the Pacific, bronze stepping stones tracing subterranean creeks through city sidewalks, fantastical bronze creatures in a Victorian conservatory garden. Community workshops, charettes, and collaborative design processes are integral to the work, not auxiliary to it. The result is public art that tends to become genuinely loved by the communities it serves — functional landmarks rather than monuments.
Skyhorn (2024) — Monumental interactive bronze sound sculpture, 12 feet tall, installed on the 3rd Street facade of UCSF Health’s Bayfront Medical Building in Mission Bay, San Francisco; a large bell-shaped horn faces skyward, connecting to a smaller horn at pedestrian level inscribed with the words “listen to the sky”; 28 wind-activated bells at the top produce an ethereal, ever-changing tone; commissioned by UCSF Health
Sunnyside Menagerie (2009) — Suite of 23 fantastical bronze creatures installed throughout the gardens of the 1898 Sunnyside Conservatory, San Francisco; each creature is a hybrid of actual fauna associated with the native origins of the Conservatory’s plantings, with an intricately carved skin meant to evoke the Victorian notion of a living cabinet of curiosities; commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission Public Art Program; the creatures are designed to be handled and discovered by visitors of all ages
Abundance (2011) — Pair of large-scale iridescent glass mosaic sculptures depicting a silver Forage Fish and a vermillion Rockfish — two species vital to the Ocean Beach ecosystem — installed at the Ortega Branch Library, San Francisco; visible from the street and from inside the library, the works are sited within view of the Pacific Ocean; community workshops with oceanographers were part of the project development; commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission
Watershed Stepping Stones (c. 2010) — Series of cast bronze relief sculptures embedded in sidewalks at multiple sites across Oakland, each evoking stepping stones across a creek and marking the path of the city’s subterranean watershed; native species — fish, frogs, and salamanders — are featured; developed through community design charettes at farmers markets, libraries, and public sites in collaboration with Oakland Creeks, Watershed & Stormwater Dept.; commissioned by the City of Oakland Public Art Program
Hayes Valley Historic Miniature Golf Extravaganza (2007) — Nine-hole temporary public miniature golf course installed at Patricia’s Green, Hayes Valley, San Francisco; each hole narrated a layer of the neighborhood’s 10,000-year history, from Ohlone settlement through urban renewal and community-led revitalization; designed to be simultaneously educational, playful, and accessible to all ages; commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission Temporary Public Art Program
Delridge Know-How (2021) — Series of large bronze stylized nuts and wrenches installed at three intersections along Delridge Way SW in Seattle, created in coordination with the RapidRide H Line transit corridor; developed through community meetings, bus-ride focus groups with riders of the 120 Metro Bus, and a site walkthrough with Roxbury Elementary students; commissioned by the Seattle Department of Transportation 1% for Art program
This entry was written by the Bay Area Artist Wiki project and is based on publicly available information.
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