Ned Kahn is kind of like a god because he can bend weather at his will. He’s modest though and just calls it art.

Ned’s art, which can exist in science museums and art museums interchangeably, “combines science, art and technology to integrate natural, human, and artificial systems… His specific works emphasize natural elements, such as water, fire, wind and sand; how these behave independently, and how they interact.” Kahn was born in Connecticut in 1960 and got his B.A. in Environmental Studies at the University of Connecticut in 1982. After getting his degree, Kahn became an assistant to the physicist, Frank Oppenheimer, the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Kahn climbed the ranks at the Exploratorium until he became the exhibit designer. In his Exploratorium designs, “typically invisible or unobservable forces [were] felt as immediate, bodily experiences, as natural effects, which are only later discovered to have been artificially constructed.” It was fun for the whole family! He stayed there for 14 years, making tornadoes and other natural phenomena to be observed by cute little field trippers from all over NorCal.

In 2003, Kahn made it to the big time and won the MacArthur “genius” grant for “recasting such forces as wind, water, and fire into forms that convey both the order and chaos of the natural world.” He also won the National Design Award in 2005, but after you’ve won a MacArthur, every other award just seems to pale in comparison.

The coolest part about Kahn’s work is that is floats freely between the categories of art and science. But Kahn thinks science is the harder of the two. He said “The art world cuts you almost infinite slack, whereas science museums are at least hoping that someone comes out with some greater understanding of something.” There are a lot of artists on the cusp of making it into a museum who would smite him for saying so. It’s just not as easy for everyone as it is for the genius that is Ned Kahn. Kahn now lives and works in Sebastopol, California, where he founded Ned Kahn Studios. He has installations and projects all over the United States, Canada, and Japan. Not bad, Ned. Not bad at all.