Our powerful studio of the arts explores and refines the language of beauty. We develop technologies focused on elegant connections between our materials and the natural world. We produce kinetic art, kites, books, shade structures, interior design, lighting systems, shows, events, installations, tools, and products.
A painter, whose diverse body of work is characterized by sumptuous, luminous color. She is also a published, and award-winning author and illustrator. She is also a mother of two amazing kids.
Designer, maker, artist, innovator, inventor. Since his earliest memories, his most powerful interests have always revolved around our atmosphere and flight. From gettings bats to chase paper airplanes he designed on the street as a child, to being an internationally recognized artist and father of two.
WindFire Designs was founded in 2002 by Tim Elverston and Ruth Whiting. Initially, our focus was on making kites as products. Soon we found that kites designed specifically as products seemed wholly unfullfilling. When aimed at cheap, kites lose their intimacy and magic, and become lost in a race for pricepoints. Innovation and beauty were suffocated by perception of affordable. We began to repair kitesurfing kites. During this time, we also started to make kites for ourselves. We fell in love with the outlandish, the time-consuming, the fine and precise. Finally, we were making the instruments of the wind we had always dreamed of.
Since then, WindFire Designs has become a hub of innovation, and fabrication. From residential and commercial RainShades, large-scale kinetic art installations, custom theater props, circle tools, kite winders, and a bunch of other things we aren't showing yet. We are excited, every day, for the work we do.
Cultivate your insanity, but listen to your materials
— Ruth Whiting —
The eye is often mightier than the calculator.
— Tim Elverston —
So often, what we need turns out to be what we already have. If we take the time to think, the solution is within arm's reach. We must add the information of thought to the materials we understand.
Above, Attraction, an oil painting by Ruth Whiting.
Above, the WindFire Cursor Kite. Designed by Tim Elverston. This highly controlable kite brings the operating system back into the natural world.
