Director's Note 6/1/12

Wednesday was May 30, the day Lynden opened to the public two years ago. We are gearing up for our second anniversary celebration on Sunday, and can look with some satisfaction at all the work going on here as well as at the long list of activities planned for the month of June. The staff grows in the summer, and you will notice several new and returning faces when you visit. Christine Kozik, our aquatic biologist in residence, is back and preparing for phase two of the Little Lake restoration, some workshops, and her camp units. Jenna Knapp, our MIAD intern this past winter, has joined the staff to work on the summer camps with Jeremy Stepien. Weston Wagner continues to work with Bob Retko and Patrick Kernan on the landscape and gardens, and Miguel Ramirez, our first sculpture conservation intern, is with us for the summer. Miguel just completed his junior year as a sculpture major at MIAD and is working with Sergio Salinas.

The anniversary event itself is a bit of a microcosm, with participatory plein air painting and yoga, live music by the Painted Caves, a tree walk and a docent-led tour, the screening of a film about Lynden (c. 1982), and an opportunity to see Gos Sa Mer: Santiago Cucullu + Ester Partegàs, our current exhibition. Both the yoga class and the docent-led tour mark the beginning of regular Sunday activities that form the backdrop of the summer season at Lynden.

We go straight from celebrating to Mind Can Change: Chance Encounters with Writing and Art, a week-long workshop with poet Rod Smith offered in collaboration with Woodland Pattern. There will be a public reading and reception on June 8. We recently reinstalled David Robbins’s Open-Air Writing Desk, made for the Dressing the Monument exhibition, in a new location on the grounds. After the poets use it next week during the workshop, we hope to schedule a few readings at the desk. And of course it will be available all summer for reading, writing and quiet contemplation.