Ruth Charlotte Kneass is a Bay Area artist whose practice has been centered in creating mobile sculptures. Incorporating a myriad of materials including rosewood, elm, oak, driftwood, marble, basalt, concrete, steel, aluminum, brass, paper, bamboo, and rope, Kneass’s floating mobiles seem to defy the laws of physics no matter their media. Each of her works reveal Kneass’ fascination with the heavenly bodies, nature’s sublime forms and classical geometric motifs.
Kneass grew up in a family of makers; her family built handmade wooden boats in San Francisco since the 1850s. Her childhood was filled with days spent with her boatbuilder father at the Kneass Boat Shop on the waterfront in the Dogpatch neighborhood. 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.