It is interesting to consider the remarkable contributions that have been made to the welfare of humanity and the planet under the aegis of the activity we call art. From Mierle Laderman Ukelel's public honoring of the New York City sanitation workers and her expose on the complex status of urban garbage and waste management, to Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison's commitment to saving the delicate ecosystems surrounding watersheds, the premises we have maintained concerning art-making are shifting out of the studio into some practical arenas. Bonnie Sherk's visionary projects, conceived and realized since the early 1970's, are tangible manifestations of the belief that art has the capacity to enter public life.

This exhibition at Canessa Gallery provides significant documentation of and insight into Sherk's public projects, and the integrative humanitarian vision they embrace. Although the photographs, memorabilia and willow branches from Crossroads Community: the Farm, which was located under the freeway at 16th and Potrero Streets in San Francisco, as well as the related texts, letters, and plans for future projects are not "art" per se, they do offer an opportunity to consider Sherk's work in the multidimensional context of public art, in a nucleus of contemporary art activity, and in her self identified roles as an environmental designer and planner, educator, and artist.

As an artist in this particular genre, Sherk's position cannot be overstated. Her vision consistently has been evolutionary for its time, reinforcing her conviction that art is the most powerful transformational activity available to us. Her beliefs and their manifestations have served as an incentive for other artists, as the magnitude of her ecological worldview has grown over three decades. She reached a stage where she now is working with San Francisco city officials on a plan for ALiving Library, a project-in-process intended to revitalize the City's Civic Center. Planned as a commingling of the new Main Library with the urbane, multigenerational population of the community, the proposal includes themed gardens that would celebrate this diversity. Visualized within an conceptually organic, grassroots framework involving teams students, parents, educators, and business people as part of the planning process, A Living Library would form what Sherk calls a "planetary network of interactivity, understanding and cooperation."

Metaphorically, ALiving Library also would link technology and culture with nature within the borders of a congested urban milieu, providing city dwellers - especially young people - with the opportunity to consider a more human, holistic way of life. One of the benefits of the Canessa Gallery retrospective is that it provides a conceptual foundation for and perspective on the evolution of the artists' process by clarifying its theoretical structure as a series of Life Frames, defined as site and situation specific environments integrated with programmatic and curricular frameworks that interconnect and bring to life the local resources of an area and enable those who experience them to do so as fully as possible. Some of the individual Life Frames include Community Crossroads:The Farm; a series of temporary Portable Parks that were installed on elevated freeways and downtown streets in San Francisco, A Garden of Knowledge, initially designed in the mid 1980's for Bryant Park in New York City; and the World Peace Garden, comprised of earth gathered from many of the countries of the world in a literal blurring of global boundaries, which would be highly appropriate for its proposed site in Washington, D.C. These enterprises can be described as multi-genre volumes that constitute an archive of life resources, promoting understanding, appreciation, and cooperation.

By integrating creative environments within the borders of urban settings, Sherk has dedicated herself to providing city dwellers with the space to see the sounds and hear the colors inherent in, but often veiled by, their over stimulated lives. Her hope, however idealistic, is that these respites will temper, even momentarily, the stress of overpopulation and the demise of the natural ecology that once thrived within the borders of St. Francis of Assisi garden. Is it art? Considered within the context of the broadest definition, as "the human ability to make or do things that display form, beauty, and unusual perception," it is art's quintessence.

-Terri Cohn

Bonnie Sherk: Projects and Plans closed July 31 at Canessa Gallery, San Francisco
Terri Cohen is an independent curator in the Bay Area and a contributing editor to ArtWeek

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