'ukiah haiku'
Through June 30, San Francisco Arts Commission City Site

INSPIRED BY ABANDONED farms he saw in Alabama and Tennessee, San Francisco artist Charles Linder has created what he calls a "sculptural poem" in the vacant lot on Grove Street across from City Hall. His installation, ukiah haiku, has four basic elements: a red 1963 Ford Ranchero with a tree growing out of its engine compartment, a giant stop sign riddled with bullet holes, an old red wooden Carnation Milk sign, and a small replica of City Hall's cupola, which Linder has turned into a bird feeder. The vacant lot also has plenty of its own native character: garbage lying around, roaring traffic nearby, a strong pee smell, and of course, a chain-link fence to keep people out and the art in. All in all, it's pretty much impossible to ignore the site's urban surroundings, but the artist's choice of objects, combined with the wild grass and flowers growing behind the fence, gives the scene a rural, almost hillbilly-ish feel. Country life and redneck-ism are fascinating to Linder, a self-proclaimed gun enthusiast who regularly uses shot-up road signs in his artwork. This installation in particular seems like a kind of poetic ode to the beauty of natural decay (as opposed to urban decay): the process by which the forces of nature envelop and slowly destroy bits and pieces of the civilized world. In Linder's artistic imagination, the Ford Ranchero is like a felled tree on the forest floor, slowly rotting away so a new tree can grow in its place. Daily, 24 hours, S.F. (415) 788-1050. Installation appears courtesy of Brian Gross Fine Art, which will host a solo show of Linder's recent work June 6-July 6. Linder will host a barbecue at the Grove Street site in mid May. See www.cashcowboy.com for more information. (Lindsey Westbrook)