Life Frames since 1970

A lime-green wall holds hand-drawn site plans and stacked color photographs of gardens and people at work; beside it a cobalt-blue wall carries three more photographs thick with greenery. A round gray felt stool waits on the honey-colored wood floor, and a band of red and white stripes rises above the wall.
A woman sits in an overstuffed armchair set down in a wide flooded lot, the still water holding a second, upside-down city of billboards and stucco houses climbing a hill. A pink bicycle wheel breaks the surface in the foreground beneath a clear blue sky.
Title
Life Frames since 1970
Artist/Creator
Bonnie Ora Sherk
Description
The first major survey of Bonnie Ora Sherk (1945–2021), an artist, environmental educator and landscape planner in the first generation of California conceptual and performance artists. It traces her work on art and ecology in public space, including Portable Parks I–III (1970, with Howard Levine), which turned San Francisco's urban "dead spaces" into temporary green environments, and The Farm (Crossroads Community), the experimental community art and ecology center she directed from 1974 to 1980 on land fragmented by freeway construction.

In this exhibition, newly transferred film and video were shown with photographs, collages, works on paper, artist books and ephemera from the 1970s and 1980s.

The exhibition was first organized by Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, San Francisco, and took place at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara.
Event Type
Exhibition
Date
August 26 – November 29, 2026
Location
Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California
Organizer
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, San Francisco. Curated by Tanya Zimbardo. UCSB presentation curated by Ana Briz, Assistant Director and Curator of Exhibitions, AD&A Museum.
Affiliated Organizations
UCSB Art, Design & Architecture Museum
Geographic Scope
City / Municipality
Climate & Ecology Themes
Urban Landscapes and Infrastructures
Discipline / Field
Arts & Design
Concepts
Place and Belonging
Ecological Domain / Habitat
Urban
Audience / Engagement Type
Public / General Audience
Methods & Approaches
Public Programming
Restoration / Ecological Intervention
Rights
Rights held by artist or creator
Website
museum.ucsb.edu
Editorial Review Status
In Progress
Item sets
California Art & Climate Archive
UC Santa Barbara
Media
A lime-green wall holds hand-drawn site plans and stacked color photographs of gardens and people at work; beside it a cobalt-blue wall carries three more photographs thick with greenery. A round gray felt stool waits on the honey-colored wood floor, and a band of red and white stripes rises above the wall.Bonnie Ora Sherk, Life Frames since 1970 1
A woman sits in an overstuffed armchair set down in a wide flooded lot, the still water holding a second, upside-down city of billboards and stucco houses climbing a hill. A pink bicycle wheel breaks the surface in the foreground beneath a clear blue sky.Bonnie Ora Sherk, Life Frames since 1970 2