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.

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.

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. To create a more sustainable human population, the arts, beauty and metaphor need to be profoundly engaged at all levels. Art can inspire creative problem solving, connect our civic infrastructure and ideas to local culture and history and engage people in a vision of an efficient and more beautiful world. As this field grows and evolves, the arts and infrastructure required to support this work need to evolve with it.

What would a 21st century sustainable culture look like? What would it need to flourish?

Happy Holidays and we’ll see you next year!

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.  

This collaborative, experimental approach to creating new work has the capacity to open the parameters of an artist’s practice, and in turn each artist’s project demands the institution to stretch beyond its current body of knowledge, and to reinvent its role.

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.

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.  

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."

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.”

PW

The notion of spirit of place is one of America’s cultural obsessions. From William Bradford’s aspirations to make Boston a “shining cittie on a hill” to Gertrude Stein’s “There’s no there there” about her native Oakland, Americans have been seized by the sense that the land is alive, that is what Emerson called “the Genius of Place,” a spirit animating particular landscapes. Paul Welschmeyer’s new book, Niles is Here, not There, is profoundly important because it dares to evoke the spirit of place of the Bay Area’s lost town of Niles, California.

Book Review: Matt Hayden, Tri City Voice

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

Jonn Herschend

“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.

Linden Tree presentation: May13th (at) 7pm

Eric and Silvia Blasen

Seeing the Land: Two Contemporary Napa Landscapes

With an unyielding passion for design and its relationship to natural and man-made forms, the husband-and-wife team of Eric and Silvina Blasen practice a progressive blend of landscape architecture, embracing utility while exploring contemporary relevance and innovation in outdoor planning. 

“Our interests are design, art, and the environment. This passion drives our work and our everyday lives. For us, sustainability is not a checklist of techniques to be done but rather a commitment to execute the lightest touch possible on the land. It is this notion of preservation and restoration that is the essence of sustainability.”

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

Bernard Trainor is passionate about designing landscapes that utilize materials and elements that are 'comfortable' within the context of a given site.   “I find that this approach translates into a true sense of atmosphere".   Bernard will be sharing examples of his process, landscape elements + finished projects at Linden Tree this month.

"Ultimately my aim is to design spaces that inspire people.  I have practiced and studied in three countries and this has in turn allowed me to appreciate the regional qualities and cultures of a place.   My favorite art, architecture, and gardens are at one with the place from which it has grown.   For this reason I aim to be versatile, adaptive, and responsive to a each site's given circumstance".

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

William Stout "Favorites"

Bill Stout is the founder and proprietor of WILLIAM STOUT ARCHITECTURAL BOOKS in San Francisco. For over 30 years the shop has been a premiere resource in the fields of architecture, art, urban planning, graphic & industrial design, furniture & interior design, and landscape architecture.

The origins of the bookstore date back to when, as a practicing architect, Bill traveled often to Europe returning with hard-to-find European architectural books. Colleagues and friends began asking Bill to bring back more and more copies and thus, the shop was born.

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

Christopher Vandendriessche was raised on his family's White Rock Vineyards in Napa Valley.  After completing a BA in Physics from UCSC, he spent 3 years studying winemaking in France.  While working and attending classes in Burgundy and Bordeaux he graduated with an Enology degree from the University of Bordeaux in 1996.  For the next two years Christopher worked as Assistant Winemaker at Luna Vineyards in Napa where he worked under a group of legendary Napa winemakers including John Kongsgaard, David Ramey, Dan Baron, Bill Knuttel, Marco Capelli, and others.  In 1998 he spent a year traveling and working in Spain (at Remelluri in Rioja) and in Mendoza Argentina, including serving as ship's cook on a small sailboat to cross the Atlantic from Spain to Venezuela. In 1999 Christopher returned home to the family winery to take over winemaking. He continues to run the winery with his brother Michael, the vineyard manager and their parents, Claire and Henri.