Ruth Charlotte Kneass is a Bay Area artist whose practice has been centered in creating mobile sculptures. Incorporating materials ranging from foraged driftwood to concrete to steel and almost everything in between, Kneass's floating mobiles seem to defy the laws of physics. After studying industrial design at SF State and silversmithing at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Ruth returned to the Bay Area in 1986 to set up her graphic design, fashion, and accessories studio, Kneass Boat Works. A decade later, Ruth accepted a job designing and producing displays for Banana Republic’s worldwide fleet of stores, where she worked for more than twenty years.
Kneass's mother created small-scale mobiles for years and eventually inspired Kneass to see how she might express herself through this form. Immaculately balanced, her works seem weightless, otherworldly and uninhibited collections of earthen objects. When undisturbed, their perceived stillness is electrifying, though they remain in almost constant, slight movement. Interactive and kinetic, they also invite viewers to stroll through and around the work, which may be animated by a gust of wind or a push of the hand, cantilevering out and gently in motion like light twinkling on the sea’s surface.
The immersive process of creating a mobile on a massive scale engages Kneass’ penchant for drawing, carving, composing, balancing, and rigging. In her ready embrace of new materials, Kneass has become comfortable wielding a hammer and chisel, chainsaw, and lathe. And, as befits someone with a boat-building background, she is adept at operating a sailing block and tackle to hoist individual pieces when fine-tuning the essential balance, as they are often too heavy to manipulate by hand. Rendered from rosewood, elm, oak, marble, concrete, black basalt, cast bronze, rope, bamboo, aluminum, brass, blackened steel, and more, her hanging sculptures can measure up to a majestic fourteen feet.
Kneass learned to operate a lathe at Tripp Carpenter’s legendary Bolinas-based furniture studio Espenet, where she stoked her obsession with long tapered drop shapes for a series of elm and oak mobiles. Much like her artistic mentor Akira Minagawa, Ruth sees opportunities for artistry everywhere she looks, from the wild coastal land of her beloved Bolinas, to the infinity of the universe — keeping her at once grounded and celestial, and open to everything the world has to offer.