Director's Note 11/1/12
Was that snow falling yesterday? It certainly seems that the lure of the indoors is being felt again: our Silk Scarf Painting Workshop last weekend filled up quickly (we’ve scheduled another one for January) and the Willow Reed Basket Weaving Workshop scheduled for this Sunday is also full (it returns in March). It is heartening to feel that level of interest as we head into the colder months, and we are planning many workshops and activities for the darker days.
We haven’t forsaken the outdoors altogether. We’ll be watching the elements to see if ice-skating or cross country skiing will be part of our winter activities, and we’re already planning this year’s Winter Carnival with guest curators American Fantasy Classics. We’ve decided to remain open on Saturdays this winter--hours are here. We will be closed on Thanksgiving Day but invite you to take a postprandial stroll with your favorite canine on Saturday, November 24, our next Dog Day.
On Friday I looked up from the desk to see Bremen Town Musicians riding by on the tractor, on its way indoors for waxing. The musicians will be back in place shortly. Roy Staab’s Chiral Formation is sitting in an empty pond--which gives it a leggy, architectural look—as we wait for the rain and…snow…to fill it back up. The pond was emptied to remove the accumulated leaves, making it easier to maintain the environment aquatic biologist Christine Kozik has worked so hard to establish. The Will Pergl/Shona Macdonald exhibition is coming down, to be replaced by works from the Bradley Family Foundation Collection, but Pergl’s large outdoor sculpture will remain on view for some time. Kevin Giese’s Immigrant finally came down on Sunday; it was meant to be temporary, but it was hard to see it go. Immigrant was one of the first outdoor installations we commissioned at Lynden back in June 2010.
Plenty of people turned out for the reception for departing artist-in-residence Colombe Marcasiano and new artist-in-residence Yevgeniya Kaganovich at the end of October. You can still see a few of Marcasiano’s experiments outside and a pictorial survey of her residency work on our blog. Kaganovich and her grow crew begin the first of several participatory workshops this Saturday, November 17 and they invite you to drop in and help them grow grow. Bring your plastic carrier bags for fodder and your cutting, ironing, stuffing and sewing skills; complete details are here. They return in January to teach us to make a functional object (wallet, small purse, backpack, pencil case, coasters, jewelry, wall decoration, place mat, coffee cup cosy, computer case, lamp shade?—they are considering the possibilities) out of recycled plastic bags, and we’re talking about scheduling a crochet-a-thon—the bags can be made into a string-like material that can then be crocheted.
December begins with a concert by I Cellisti, the String Academy of Wisconsin’s cello ensemble, and we’ll be making terrarium pendants at our Holiday Giftmaking Workshop on December 2. The 2012 Suitcase Fund opens on December 3, so get your application ready if you have an exhibition or screening coming up thereafter. You can enjoy the last dog day of this year on December 16, and the first of the new year on January 20 (we will close in between for our winter hiatus, December 24 through January 1). January is also the month for Light Up the Garden and the beginning of a new Winter Class session. More on that soon, but we’re looking forward to offering classes with environmental educator Naomi Cobb, a Story Tile class with Heather Eiden, and another collaboration with Alliance Francaise: an art class taught in French.
We may be migrating from the expansive outdoors to warmer confines indoors, but I think this transition only stimulates the wandering that goes on inside our heads. David Robbins’s Open Air Writing Desk, which was sometimes used for both writing and reading, went into the barn today, but we are planning lots of programs to keep readers and writers occupied this winter. Cynthia Morris is visiting the Women’s Speaker Series (co-sponsored by Boswell Book Company) on January 15 to talk about her latest novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, and the next day she’ll be offering a workshop, Write Now: Embrace Your Writing Impulse for Fun or Profit. There’s an early bird price for the workshop, and we think it would make a wonderful present for an aspiring writer on your gift list. In March we join forces with Woodland Pattern Book Center to bring writer and collector Sharon Fiffer to Lynden for an intensive writing workshop, and Margy Stratton of MKE Reads tells me there may be another special guest on the Speaker Series in February.
That’s a lot to digest!
Polly
