Director's Note 5/1/18
May flowers—I’ve seen a few. Down in the ravine on the south part of the grounds, the daffodils glow yellow. Today I watched the magnolias outside my window transform from masses of branches with a few forlorn blooms to masses of blossoms obscuring the branches. I looked up from my desk from time to time, hoping to catch the flowers in the act of opening. I didn’t succeed, but my magnolia research let me encounter the word “dehisce” for the second time today—the first in connection with the poet and scholar Fred Moten.
The garden is sprouting sculptures, too. The first (and larger) half of Marta Pan’s Floating Sculpture No. 3 is now out in Big Lake, to be joined by its companion tomorrow. Emilie Clark’s Research Station is back on its stone pad, its solar power hooked up, and the fish Patrick—who survived the winter in the barn—taking up life outdoors as part of the sculpture’s aquaponic system. Katy Cowan’s Reflector, visible from the east side of the bridge, has been in the lake all along, but looks particularly magical under several inches of clear, choppy water. Smaller sculptures come and go as they are disassembled and waxed, while others receive their belated spring maintenance in situ.
Last weekend’s International Sculpture Day celebration was the warm-up for a busy month ahead. This weekend we host Kites over Lynden, along with Radical Jewelry Makeover’s pop-up shop. The following weekend we celebrate World Bonsai Day (and the reopening of the bonsai pavilion) with a temporary exhibition, a demonstration by guest teacher Jennifer Price, and a reception, and Mother’s Day with a garden-inspired flower arrangement workshop with Courtney Joy Stevens (deadline for registration is today at 5 pm, and we can only accommodate a small number of arrangers); a silk scarf painting workshop with Leslie Perrino; and a sculpture walk led by artist-in-residence Katheryn Corbin. She will focus on works by women sculptors and serve tea afterward in pots of her own making. If that’s not enough, we will be celebrating Pina Bausch’s choreography by learning, performing, and filming the Nelken-line (tell me today’s weather didn’t make you feel like dancing).
Allison Pataki returns to the Women’s Speaker Series with her newest book, a memoir, Beauty in the Broken Places, and the poets take the field at the end of the month with Chuck Stebelton’s bird walk and a workshop with the Oxeye Press poets. You can improve your gardening skills at our family workshop—we’ll be making sprouting gardens in found objects—and at Joel Hitchcock Tilton’s workshop on companion planting with organic pesticides. And if you haven’t seen it yet, this is the last month for Katheryn Corbin’s exhibition, Migrant.
It’s not too late to get your summer camp registration in—places remain in some camps.
