Everyone and everything on Earth and in Space is part of A Living Library of diversity: people, birds, trees, air, water, and all the things we create, such as - parks, gardens, schools, curricula, artworks, networks, communities, celebrations. A Living Library, or, A.L.L., for short, provides a way to understand that culture and technology are part of nature. It’s all nature.
A Living Library provides a powerful systemic framework, multiple methodologies and strategies for creating place-based, ecological change in communities and schools - locally and globally.
A.L.L. integrates local resources - past, present, future - and transforms them with community, to become vibrant, content-rich, art-filled, ecological learning landscapes; each Branch linked to another.
We are maintaining this site to document the history of A Living Library and founder Bonnie Ora Sherk. This version of the site was active from 2011 to 2023.
A.L.L's first website began in approximately 2000. Versions of the original website can be found at archive.org.
Please visit our new site for current updates and information. A Living Library continues to grow and thrive!
Wednesday, May 18th at 5:30 PM
Roosevelt Island’s A Living Library Think Park & Garden
(in the rear of the garden)
The Board of Directors of Life Frames Inc. is sad to announce that Bonnie Ora Sherk, Founder and Director of Life Frames, Inc. and A Living Library, has died. Her life and work were acknowledged in a November 19, 2021 obituary in the New York Times. Our love goes out to her sisters Abby Kellner-Rode and Rachel Binah and her niece and nephews, Maija Kellner-Rode, David Kellner-Rode and Matthew Rode. A Celebration of Life, open to the public, is planned for March 20, 2022, at the San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA, 94133. More details will be forthcoming by mid-January on the A.L.L. website.
Bonnie Ora Sherk, 76, of San Francisco, CA, died on August 8, 2021. Daughter of Eleanor and Sydney Kellner, she was born on May 18, 1945, in New Bedford, MA and raised in Montclair, NJ. She received a B.A. in Art from Rutgers University’s Douglass College, an M.A. in Environmental Sculpture from San Francisco State University, and certifications in Landscape Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley and Oomoto School of Traditional Japanese Arts in Kameoka, Japan. She lived in San Francisco, New York City and Lake Gerard, NJ.
Bonnie was a brilliant, pioneering visionary, internationally acclaimed American artist with a career spanning over 50 years. She was a landscape architect, environmental educator and founder of Crossroads Community, San Francisco, (1974-1980). Known as The Farm, it was situated under a freeway interchange in the Mission District. In 1981 Sherk founded and directed A Living Library - Life Frames, Inc. with locations on Roosevelt Island, NYC (2001-present), and in San Francisco at the Bernal Heights Living Library & Think Park Nature Walk (2002-present) and OMI/Excelsior Living Library & Think Park (1998-present). A.L.L. brings community members and youth together to restore native habitats, create educational gardens, plant thousands of trees, and daylighting San Francisco’s Islais Creek watershed. The theme that ran through all her work is the interdependent relationships between humans, animals and nature. Well-known for her performance work in the early 1970s, one of her most iconic was Public Lunch, where Sherk, elegantly clad in black velvet and leather boots, consumed a meal while caged in the San Francisco Zoo’s Lion House, with tigers and lions in adjacent cages being fed simultaneously. She created temporary “Portable Parks”, bringing animals, grass and palm trees to sites around freeway interchanges and other urban settings.
Her work and lectures were featured in exhibits throughout the US, Europe, Asia and elsewhere including the Venice Biennale 2017 and the Liverpool Biennial 2021, in United Nations and Smithsonian publications, and in many art books and magazines.
Bonnie is survived by her two sisters, Rachel Binah of Little River, CA and Abby Kellner-Rode of Bend, OR, niece and nephews, Maija Kellner-Rode, David Kellner-Rode and Matthew Rode. A Celebration of Life is planned for March 20, 2022, in San Francisco.
A team has coalesced to continue her work. For more information please contact Robert Croonquist, rcroon2022@icloud.com
Her life was acknowledged with an obituary in the New York Times on November 19, 2921 and in the Roosevelt Islander and Ecoartspace.
Bonnie Ora Sherk will Present an Illustrated Talk, June 15 - 10-11am PT/1-2pm ET/6-7pm BST - on A Living Library and the A.L.L. Toolkit she conceived for the Liverpool Biennial, to create a place-based Branch Liverpool Living Library & Think Park in Liverpool, to be interconnected with other A.L.L. Branches - globally.
A Living Library facilitates ecological transformations in communities. Pictured: Before & After Views into Chinatown Living Library & Think Park: 2004-2010, San Francisco, California
Her Presentation will expand on a feature she created for Enzyme 2: Life Systems, a creative Magazine developed by Brazilian artists Jorgge Menna Barreto, Joelson Buggilla, and German Art Historian/Curator, Sarah Kristin Happensberger, for the Liverpool Biennial.
Registration for Bonnie Ora Sherk's Presentation and the rest of the Enzyme 2 Event Series is completely free. Reserve your space today with link – here. Once you’ve registered through the Eventbrite system, you’ll receive a follow-up email with detailed instructions for accessing the event on the day with a Zoom link.
The June 15th Zoom Presentation will take audience members on a water-based journey, with Bonnie Ora’s site-sensitive and life-framing artworks encouraging an exploration of local watersheds and other resources.
An excerpted version highlighting Bonnie Ora’s contribution to the Magazine is linked here.
The Magazine situates Bonnie and her work as a point of connection — between the early ecological art movement and emerging artists, between different cultures and communities, and between bodies and the earth. A.L.L. Native Seed Packets included in the printed Magazines are a metaphorical and literal invitation into greater ecological awareness and a transformed way of being and doing for the local community.
The full publication Enzyme 2 is now also live online ! This Magazine collaboration between editors, curators, designers, and artists — including our own Bonnie Ora Sherk — is part of a commissioned program of works for the Liverpool Biennial 2021.
Enzyme 2: Life Systems is available for digital download, link here.
Celebrating its 11th year, the Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest festival of contemporary visual art. Centered on the body and its varied ways of connecting to the world, this year’s festival brings together 50 international artists and two collectives.
Creative Green Skills Job Training Youth Leader and Native Plant Coordinator - Available NOW !
compensation: TBD
employment type: Full To Part-Time
non-profit organization
Reply to the Founder and Director with cover letter and resume: bonnieora@alivinglibrary.org
Job Description:
Dynamic Leader/Teacher / Gardener For Middle School / High School to Age 24 Youth who receive Paid Internship in Green Skills Job Training including: California Native Trees-Understory Plants / Ecology / Plant Communities / Rain Gardens / Urban Agriculture / Flood Mitigation / Watersheds / Green Job Opportunities / Work Ethic (part-time)
The dynamic, inspired, and cheerful, Outdoor Landscape Educator and Expert Gardener will be leading and recruiting diverse groups of Middle School and High School to Age 24 Youth in hands-on learning and doing for After School and Summer Paid Internships, in: CA native gardening and tree planting/staking/tying, urban agriculture, and diverse landscape projects, as well as leading students in understanding local ecology, history, watersheds, and existing local community, including its natural, multicultural, and built resources. Leader will be doing student outreach and recruitment, attracting students for hands-on, Paid Internship learning program, and leading gardening, related landscape activities as standards-based learning processes. You will be communicating about sustainability, ecological systems and native landscapes as well as performing community outreach activities in ways that are fun, educational, and relevant. You will also help with some administration of program. You may also work with K-5 students in hands-on gardening and landscaping.
A Living Library, Life Frame, Think Park, & A.L.L. are registered trademarks
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