Godmother of the Parklet, Artist Bonnie Ora Sherk Celebrated in Retrospective
Bonnie Ora Sherk began her career as a landscape painter, but then realized she wanted to be in the landscape herself. From the nucleus of that idea, her 1970 installation “Portable Park,” a popup farm complete with sod, trees, and farm animals situated under a San Francisco freeway overpass, was born. As she observed, “Freeways are beautiful, but they need to be softened. Why use them just for cars?” Sherk, who died in 2021, spent her career transforming “dead spaces” into lived experiences like gardens, farms, and trails, all meant to engage audiences by showing them the wonders of the…
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