Director's Note 3/1/18

Premonitions of spring are everywhere, from the birds calling in the early morning, to the snowdrops drooping beside the barn. The turkey herd is making regular appearances, each bird looking sleek and well-fed. The land team, Claire and Kyle, operating in the gaps between ice and mud, head out to the back acres to remove ash trees, their orange safety gear flapping in the breeze. On Monday, out on studio visits with our friends from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, we tilted our faces upward as we exited the car at each stop, grateful for every ray of sun.

We try to tell ourselves that this is not—yet—the permanent change of season, but it’s hard not to put winter behind us. We have run three vegetable garden-planning workshops in the past weeks, and we have a garden journal-making workshop this weekend and a workshop on planning a cut-flower garden coming up in early April. Artist-in-residence Portia Cobb has been in to discuss which vegetables will be going into Lizzie’s Garden, and we’re beginning to fill up Arianne King Comer’s schedule for her July residency, when she brings her drop-in resist-dyeing studio back to Lynden. Summer camps are filling up; be sure to check out our latest addition, Writers in the Garden, a collaboration with the UWM Writing Project.

If you are heading to Lynden for a stroll, to hear one of the many authors we are bringing in for Margy Stratton’s Women’s Speaker Series (tickets are still available for tonight's event with Kelly Barnhill), or to join Naomi Cobb for her Crow Moon Walk tomorrow, be sure to visit our new exhibition, Katheryn Corbin: Migrant. Corbin’s figurative and sawdust-fired functional ceramics fill the gallery and stray into the dining room, where they keep company with Isamu Noguchi’s Sinai.

We are hard at work on the spring/summer schedule, adding new workshops and events to the web calendar almost every day. Be sure to go online to see what’s on the horizon.