REBAR

Linden Tree Presentation: March 10th (at) 7:00pm

Rebar will introduce their work and share details from various projects currently on the drawing boards, including recent transformations of pavement into parks, modular sidewalks and mapping the tacoshed.

"In November 2005, a group of landscape architects, artists, and others calling themselves REBAR “rented” a metered parking space in downtown San Francisco and transformed it into a tiny public park, complete with grass, a bench for seating, and a tree for shade. The park lasted only for a matter of hours, and was met with a mixture of “surprise, approval, joy, and indignation,” but, surprisingly, no one was arrested or fined. In the two years since this intial act of guerilla urbanism, the idea has exploded into something of an international phenomenon." --On Site Issue 19: Streets, Spring/Summer 2008.

Based in San Francisco, Rebar is an interdisciplinary studio operating at the intersection of art, design and activism. Rebar’s work encompasses visual and conceptual public art, landscape design, urban intervention, temporary performance installation, digital media and print design.

Rebar remixes the ordinary, repurposes the ubiquitous and restructures the fabric of the urban environment by exposing hidden assumptions and shared meanings embedded in the everyday experience of the built world. Perhaps best known as the originators of “PARK(ing) Day” – an annual global event where artists and citizens transform metered parking spaces into temporary parks – Rebar has created numerous innovative artworks and conceptual projects around the globe.

Rebar has exhibited its work and lectured worldwide, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, ISEA, 2009 Dublin, ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the American Institute of Architects, the Canadian Center for Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Parsons School of Design, U.C. Berkeley, the Univ. of Michigan, the Univ. of Mass. at Amherst and many others.

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Glen Sherman

Linden Tree presentation: February 10^th, 2010 (at) 7:00pm

COLLABORATION AND CONSTRUCTION – The Creative Process of Managing the Culture of Construction

Whirling Dervish  (wurl-ing dur-vish) n. 1.  A mystical dancer who stands between the material and cosmic worlds.  His dance is part of a sacred ceremony in which the dervish rotates in a precise rhythm.  He represents the earth revolving on its axis while orbiting the sun.  The purpose of the ritual whirling is for the dervish to empty himself of all distracting thoughts, placing him in trance; released from his body he conquers dizziness.

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Sam Bower

Linden Tree presentation: January 13th (at) 7pm

REBUILDING A SUSTAINABLE CULTURE

Throughout history, human communities have found ways to live within the carrying capacity of the places they lived.  What we now think of as art, was deeply integrated into their architecture, resource management and spiritual connections to the Earth. Since the 1960's, contemporary artists have begun addressing the needs of communities and ecosystems directly through the arts, pioneering a reintegration of aesthetics, restoration science, spirituality, urban development and green planning.

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December

Thank you for visiting Linden Tree.   Our 2009 presentations are now complete.   Please join us next year when we welcome Sam Bower from Greenmuseum.org on January 13th.

Happy Holidays and we’ll see you next year!

Mary Anne Friel

Teresita Fernandez, Fire photo: Lela Mckee

Linden Tree presentation:  November 11th (at) 7pm

SILKING SPIDERS, CONSTRUCTING A FARADAY CAGE AND DECOMMISSIONING GUNS: Producing Contemporary Art at The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Mary Anne Friel is a Master Printer and Project Coordinator for the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.  The FWM curates a widely respected Artists in Residence program which enables artists to achieve challenging projects by connecting and fostering interaction with a broad range of specialists in science, industry, media and design.

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Surfacedesign

Linden Tree presentation: October 14th (at) 7pm

MUSEO DEL ACERO HORNO3, Monterey Mexico

A team of international designers collaborated to transform a decommissioned blast furnace and a brownfield site into a modern history museum dedicated to the region’s rich history of steel production.  Borrowing from materials endemic to the site, innovative landscape design weaves together with modern architecture to usher an old relic into the 21st century. Environmentally sensitive technologies — such as green roofs and a storm water collection system — offer a new approach to the landscape while respecting the original context.

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Lucia Howard, David Weingarten, Joe Fletcher

Linden Tree presentation: September 9th (at) 7pm

Ranch Houses: Living the California Dream

With its archetypal open plan and embrace of indoor-outdoor living, the California Ranch House is at the very heart of the California dream.  When we think of ranch houses – those low-slung, informal dwellings that formed new suburban communities after world War II – we are thinking of just one part of a phenomenon that has its roots in the state’s late nineteenth-century Spanish and Mexican ranchos, and which continuestoday in houses that are startling and up-to-the-minute.  

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Michael Cronan & Eric Baker

Linden Tree Presentation: August 12th (at) 7pm

TODAY is a jewel box of seemingly random, yet thoughtfully selected, images created and dispatched daily via email. At times tender, wicked, nostalgic, amusing, and dazzling, each edition is presented without narration, editing or explanation by its author, designer Eric Baker.

"It all began as a goof. One day I sent a good friend about 50 random pictures of cheese. I don't know why, but to me cheese is funny, perhaps it is the word itself and its various connotations. Eventually I began looking closer, or should I say broader at 'things'. Things lost on the fringes... ordinary, odd, beautiful things. Esoteric images, old diagrams, typography, cartography – visions of a once promising but now extinct future."

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Paul Welschmeyer

Linden Tree presentation: July 8th (at) 7pm

NILES IS HERE, NOT THERE – Alley Talk and Other Civic Maladies

“After living here in Niles for the past twenty years, apparently a lot of my practice has found its way into my community life, creating a wealth I never expected. A wealth that comes from like minded individuals, nurturing the culture landscape of Niles despite the draconian ways of the City of Fremont.

None of this is funny, but it is.”

Paul Welschmeyer

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Jonn Herschend

Linden Tree presentation: June 10th (at) 7pm

SLAPSTICK AND THE SUBLIME – A case for the sight gag as conceptual beauty

Raised in a midwestern amusement park, Jonn Herschend is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and experimental publisher preoccupied with how emotional confusion, absurdity and veracity play out in the realm of the everyday.   For his presentation at Linden tree, he will be screening a series of short clips ranging from 1930’s slapstick films to works by contemporary artists.  He  is interested in the ways that the sight gag and deadpan humor have been used historically and how they might be further pushed as a means to bridge the gap between conceptual art and aesthetic beauty.  The screening and talk represent issues that he is currently exploring in his own work.

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