Director's Note 11/1/15
With the Nohl Fellowship jurying coming so late in October (watch for an announcement of the 2015 fellows very soon), and that lovely interlude of warm weather, it is difficult to fathom that we are already nearly a full week into November. Most of the trees are now bare, the leaves have relocated to the still-green lawn, and that's certainly a grey, autumnal sky I'm looking at. Grey but variable in its brightness: I jump up periodically to switch the overheads on and off as more or less light makes it way through the blanket of clouds.
A quick note on the Postscript event we planned this weekend as a follow-up to the Reggie Wilson performance: we are rescheduling for early 2016, when we hope to align schedules with out-of-town guests we'd like to invite. We'll keep you posted on those developments (feel free to send me your email if you'd like to be added to a mailing list for that event).
We are also turning our thoughts to the end of year holidays. Although we will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (we are always closed on Thursdays), we are open as usual (10 am-5 pm) the rest of the weekend and invite you and your canine friends to walk off the feasting during our monthly Dog Day (November 28). For those off school on November 25, we're offering a beefed-up Art Drop-In from noon until 5 pm. And of course we will have the usual parade of look-don't-eat wild turkeys for your viewing enjoyment.
We also get down to serious holiday giftmaking this month, starting on November 22 with a workshop designed to send you home with a set of handmade wooden blocks for a young person in your life (tree cookies anyone?). These workshops continue well into December, and range from simple activities suitable for families with smaller children to more advanced workshops for adults. To enhance the celebratory spirit, we will have light refreshments available for participants. Whether you are making a gift for yourself or another, these workshops should provide a cheerful atmosphere for art making as we head into winter.
While we had many visitors taking advantage of the warm weather this week, none were happier than the kindergartners from Messmer who came on their SHARP Literacy field trip on Wednesday and were greeted by sunshine and colorful leaves rather than the mud and cold more common to this season. But there are still plenty of reasons to drop in for a visit this month, including what must be a pre-winter propensity to bring the outdoors inside in our exhibitions and displays. Scott Wolniak's exhibition, Landscape Record, has filled the house with drawings, sculptures and plaster tablets, and the Milwaukee Bonsai Society have been re-creating fall-in-miniature right beside the front desk with their rotating display of bonsai trees and accompanying kusamono.
Other November events include a family workshop this weekend, our last Tuesday in the Garden before the holidays (new dates for 2016 posted now), and a homeschool day focused on micro forms. Adults are invited to weave wicker baskets with Jeremy Stepien, create those block kits with Naomi Cobb and Andy Yencha, or meet author Renée Rosen at our Women's Speaker Series event on November 16. Rosen's talk will be preceded by recommendations for book club reads from the ever-popular team of Daniel Goldin and Jane Glaser of Boswell Book Company. All citizen scientists are welcome to join Project FeederWatch by attending one of our two orientations this month--then you, too, can start to count feeder birds as they move through Wisconsin--and to fuse their interest in recycling with their creative impulses in a grow workshop with Yevgeniya Kaganovich and her crew.
