Rose Draws Trees at Lynden Sculpture Garden
Interdisciplinary artist Rose Curley is, like Lynden’s original owner, Harry Bradley, a lover of trees. Bradley purchased the property in the late 1920s and over the decades transformed what had been a cornfield with a handful of trees into a mosaic of formal gardens, lawns, ponds, ravines, savanna, shrubland, and forest with an enviable aboriculture collection that includes three towering elms that survived Dutch elm disease. More recently, Lynden staff has completed an Urban Forestry Management Plan that, among many other things, imagines the future of Lynden’s treescape.
Rose spends her time at the sculpture garden drawing imaginary trees inspired by the surroundings. She works mainly in gold leaf on wood panel but can also be found drawing from observation in ink and graphite. As the weather turns colder, she’ll move indoors, setting up an easel in front of Lynden’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The artist welcomes observers but asks that you do not disturb the process.
About the Artist
Rose Margaret Curley is a gender fluid multidisciplinary artist and writer from Milwaukee. Her formal art education began in 2005, studying abroad with Maryland Institute College of Art in Aix-en-Provence, France. Trees have been one of her special interests since childhood, when she climbed them to escape from the social world. Rose was informally diagnosed with autism while in college at Rhode Island School of Design, where it became apparent that creativity has been an outlet and coping mechanism in an overstimulating world. She went on to get her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and returned to Milwaukee to teach. Over the past decade, she has been a volunteer at her primary and secondary alma maters, an artist in residence in Milwaukee Public Schools through Lynden’s Innovative Educators Institute, and she has taught fine arts studio courses at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She was a 2016 Nohl Fellow in the Emerging Artist category. Rose hosts an annual invitational retreat for artists, musicians, and writers in Land 'O Lakes, Wisconsin.
