Director's Note 5/1/13

Spring, at long last. I can see the magnolia blossoms opening on the two trees beyond my window, and I can smell them on the wind when I step outside. Daffodils are blooming, there are hyacinths down by the barn, and there are eggs in the wood duck boxes. The warm pockets, like the ravines, are a bit ahead (hello forsythia); the plants with a good southern exposure and a wall or fence behind them are making the most of it. The willows are pale green, their thin, elastic branches in constant motion like the surface of the water beneath them, and the red blur nearby resolves, as you approach it, into a maple covered with small red flowers.

Signs of summer are here: we are planting, planning, and preparing to picnic. This week we begin to excavate the area where our pilot garden, a part of Emilie Clark’s exhibition Sweet Corruptions, will take root. The teens of Urban Underground’s Fresh Plaits program planted seeds on Saturday, mentored by Venice Williams of Alice’s Garden—they will return to Lynden at the end of May to transplant the seedlings and prepare the garden with Clark. You still have most of the month to see Rappaccini’s Daughter, an exhibition of work by Sheila Held, the first in a series of occasional exhibitions that explore Women, Nature and Science (Clark’s is the second).

We switch to summer hours the week of May 13, staying open until 7:30 pm on Wednesdays to accommodate picnickers, late strollers, and perhaps those doing t’ai chi. Thanks to all those who responded to the e-mail about yoga and t’ai chi. We are finalizing the schedule and plan to begin classes in June—we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready. If you’d like to add yourself to that contact list, send us an email.

Kelly Lahl is planning a series of summer Shibori dyeing workshops and we hope to have some ceramics workshops on the schedule soon (watch the calendar or Facebook). We’ve got several intergenerational activities in May, including a Newspaper Yarn family workshop and Springing Out, an exploration of Lynden’s back acres with naturalist Naomi Cobb designed for parents and children aged 6-9.

And now for a note of urgency: there are several events in May and June that require registration and that are filling fast. These would include homeschool day; our summer art and nature camps; Siting, Placement, and Flow, a weeklong writing workshop presented in collaboration with Woodland Pattern Book Center with poets Lytle Shaw and Ed Friedman; and the June 9 silk scarf workshop. There are also two early bird discounts that lapse soon, for the 2013 UWM Art Education Institute: Attentive Living: Art, Nature, Place and for Sally Duback’s Dimensional Papermaking Workshop. Finally, if you have been thinking about holding an event at Lynden this summer, I urge you to contact us soon. We are booking up quickly!