A Living Library – Archive Site

Sep '18

Bonnie Ora Sherk Exhibits Her Work At The de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, CA

Sitting Still Series © Bonnie Ora Sherk

From September 28, 2018 to June 15, 2019, the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara University is hosting the exhibition Radical Velocity, curated by Lauren Baines, showing the power of the human body to impact our sense of place. Several images from Bonnie Ora Sherk‘s Sitting Still Series (1970), a powerful and pioneering, environmental performance installation series, are being featured in the Exhibition. The Sitting Still Series highlights how a seated human figure can very simply transform an environment. Seated in an armchair in diverse urban places – Army Street/101 Freeway Interchange Construction Zone, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Financial District including Bank of America Plaza, and various indoor/ outdoor cages in the San Francisco Zoo, Bonnie Ora Sherk transformed dead spaces into new and interesting environments that changed our perceptions about possibilities.

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Posted by Pushpanjali Roy in
A.L.L. Pedagogy, Art, Landscape Architecture, & Systemic Design, Islais Creek Watershed

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Apr '18

Bonnie Ora Sherk & A Living Library Featured In “Discover Your Watershed” Video Series Produced By San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

How much do you know about your Watershed? San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, in partnership with BAYCAT, a nonprofit enterprise, has produced a video series featuring 12 local storytellers who share their stories about San Francisco's eight Watersheds.

As one of the presenters, Bonnie Ora Sherk talks about Islais Creek Watershed, the largest in San Francisco interconnecting eleven communities, and her evolutionary work around the Watershed - transforming barren, sterile concrete stretches into beautiful California Native Learning Zones and Rain Gardens while conserving fresh water and utilizing it in a productive way. She also stresses on the importance and value of Watershed as a way to frame life as well as to understand interconnected systems. Here is the link to her video.

The "Discover Your Watershed" video stories will be premiered on May 09, 2018 from 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the lobby of Koret Auditorium at San Francisco Public Library. Register for the event to learn more about the history of the city's Watersheds.

Subscribe to SF Water Power Sewer, the official YouTube channel of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), to watch the video series after the premiere.

Posted by Pushpanjali Roy in
Islais Creek Watershed, OMI/Excelsior Living Library & Think Park

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Jul '17

Bonnie Ora Sherk – Public Talk at SFAI 2017 Summer Symposium

Bonnie Ora Sherk, long-time ecological artist, landscape architect, planner, educator, and Founder & Director of Life Frames, Inc. & A Living Library, presented her pioneering work at the San Francisco Art Institute 2017 Summer Symposium, I Object ! Self Organization + Political Agency as Aesthetic Practice, in conjunction with Cuban Artist, Tania Bruguera and others, on Saturday, July 15, at the San Francisco Art Institute. This Symposium was also in conjunction with Bruguera’s exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Bonnie Ora Sherk will also give another lecture at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on August 2, 6:30 pm as part of Escuela Arte Util (School of Useful Art), also part of Bruguera’s exhibition, and was additionally featured on a KQED radio broadcast and website about the exhibition and Arte Util.

At the SFAI talk, she presented her local and global, planetary genre, A Living Library, as Funcshuional Art, a term she invented, that marries East and West, North and South, with it’s multiple, practical, systemic processes, creative solutions and strategies that transform the environment, address climate change and flood mitigation among other benefits, while also educating all ages about natural systems and ecological stewardship.

Her presentation at SFAI included examples of Branch Living Library & Think Parks in the Islais Creek Watershed, the largest in San Francisco, including the OMI/Excelsior Living Library & Think Park that is transforming four contiguous SFUSD schools and campuses with integrated learning for PreK-12 students (Leadership High School, San Miguel Early Education School, James Denman Middle School, Balboa High School), and the prototype Bernal Heights Living Library & Think Park Nature Walk that is interconnecting multiple schools, parks, public housing, streets, and other open spaces through development of a new, narrative resilient landscape of California native trees and understory with interpretive signage leading to the currently hidden Islais Creek at the south side of St. Mary’s Park and Highway 280.

This Nature Walk will be expanded throughout the Watershed, to interconnect its eleven neighborhoods: Noe Valley, Mission, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill, Portola, Crocker-Amazon, Excelsior, OMI, Sunnyside, Glen Park. Also proposed is transformation of the currently derelict and flooding, Chavez/101 Freeway and Alemany/101 Freeway Interchanges into Northern & Southern Gateways to the Watershed.

Please come to Yerba Center for the Arts in SF on August 2 at 6:30 pm to learn more about Sherk's work with Funcshuional Art and A Living Library. This talk is free and open to the public.

Posted by bonnieora in
Art, Landscape Architecture, & Systemic Design, Islais Creek Watershed

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Dec '16

Arte y Cultiva/Art & Cultivation In Bernal Heights Living Library & Think Park At Junipero Serra Early Education School

The Living Library & Think Park at Junipero Serra Early Education School has been transformed this Fall by students, teachers and volunteers working hard to bring life and beauty to the Lower Garden. From Kindergarteners to Fifth Graders, over a hundred students have spent weeks in the Garden, pulling weeds, watering thirsty perennials, creating pathways and building a worm compost to feed the Garden! For some time now, this Living Library & Think Park Garden was needing some TLC, and starting in September it received some enthusiastic helping hands! Bean trellises were built, signs in both Spanish and English were made, and a beautiful mural depicting the relationship between humans and other forms of nature was painted on the stairwell of the Lower Garden.

A fantastic volunteer, Salvador from Chile, graced us with his construction skills and fixed many structures in the Garden. He helped to rebuild garden beds and lent his hand to bringing color and art into the environment ! Thank you, Salvador for all of your hard work!

bedprep-2 Growing spaces were rebuilt, soil amended and cultivated with seeds.

plantingbrassicas-3 4th and 5th Graders planting Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cauliflower and Kale.

beantrellis-2 Ms. Monica’s and Ms. P’s Kindergarten Classes planted the beans that quickly climbed up the trellis that the older students helped to erect.

Students learned all about worms in Ms. Kristin’s and Ms. Alex’s classes and then went on a scavenger hunt in the Living Library Garden looking for worms, leaves, grass and twigs to add to the worm compost they built.

bilingualsigns-2 bilingualsigns2-2 The majority of students at J.Serra are native Spanish speakers, so we wanted to make their Living Library Garden a bi-lingual space. Beautiful images and scientific terms surround the outdoor classroom

The Lower Garden at Junipero Serra is in bloom and students truly love spending time there. Their Living Library & Think Park is a year-round sanctuary for not only children, but for our wonderful pollinators like hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. The amount of imagination, smiles and laughs that are growing in this ecological and happy environment is enough to bring the roses to bloom and seeds to germinate. The young gardeners of Bernal Heights and the Mission District are busily transforming their Living Library & Think Park Garden into a magical space for humans and other forms of nature, while learning to plant seeds of kindness everywhere they go. Written by Alexandra Grubb