Director's Note 10/1/11

It may be difficult to reconcile the warm breezes with the falling leaves, but there have been crowds of people—students from Nicolet High School, Mount Mary College art students, adult tour groups and individual visitors—at the sculpture garden today. Perhaps they are checking out the waterfall or the aquatic plants in the Little Lake (thank you again to the Master Gardeners and other volunteers who helped with the planting), or swinging in the sculpture/swings that are part of our latest exhibition, Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument. They could be admiring the many bronze sculptures, looking particularly fine after a recent visit from our conservators Douglass Kwart and Kate Glembotsky. Or they could just be enjoying the sunshine on this beautiful fall day. (Last week many of the visitors were dropping off their Nohl Fellowship applications and work samples.)

However, we are pragmatists here at Lynden. We’ve switched to our fall hours —we’re still open six days a week through Thanksgiving weekend (yes, we’ll be open Friday, November 25 from 10 am-5 pm and the Saturday and Sunday that follow from noon to 5 pm) but close earlier on Wednesdays. And our programming continues to move indoors in October, though all three of the workshops we are offering this month stray outside at times. Thea Kovac brings her Secret Life of Artists: Cultivating an Artistic Practice workshop to Lynden on October 23—a day of creative play for active, inactive, and aspiring visual and performing artists, writers and those who are curious about human creativity. If you have kids who will be off school on October 28, consider bringing them to Lynden for our first School’s Out Workshop. The day’s activities revolve around forest sculpture. Finally, Heather Eiden will be filling the months before we can resume weekly outdoor yoga with a series of workshops on the seven chakras or energy centers; on October 30 she takes a multisensory approach to the Root/Base Chakra. (If you still have a Yoga in the Garden class card, you can use it for the workshops, too.)

For those of you who follow the Nohl Fellowship program, the 2010 exhibition is now open at Inova and the series of ancillary events that enliven the exhibition have begun. On October 27, the new jurors come to town and give a free talk (also at Inova), about their curatorial practices and interests.