Director's Note 7/1/18

The high period of Call & Response is underway. Arianne King Comer arrived Sunday evening for her month-long residency, her second at Lynden, and I’ve received many queries about when visitors can begin joining her around the dye pot. The first open session will be this Thursday, from 1 to 5 pm. Feel free to drop in for one of these informal resist-dye workshops. We will provide cloth, wax, and dye—but bring a clean article of clothing (cotton and silk work best) to work on. We will be asking you to (temporarily) contribute your dye-ings to Ibile’s Voices, the exhibition that will be accumulating around Comer’s own work in the gallery (all work will be returned after the show comes down). Also consider adding to our communal Lizzie’s Garden cookbook project by bringing a recipe—maybe for a vegetable growing there, or for something that holds a strong memory for you. The open dyeing sessions are free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden, but please don’t let admission stand in the way of participation. We would like to make these sessions accessible to everyone.

By next week Reggie Wilson will be back in town and rehearsals will be taking place across Lynden as we prepare for Wilson’s remaking of Citizen with a large, local, intergenerational cast.

You will be able to dive more deeply into Lizzie’s Garden with artist-in-residence Portia Cobb and chef and food scholar Scott Barton the weekend of July 14-15. See below for the tastings and food preserving demos that will be open to the public. We invite you to stick around to hear Milwaukee poet and storyteller Kavon Cortez Jones perform on the porch of Eliza’s Cabinet on Saturday.

We will be hosting our first Free Family Day of the summer on July 22. The theme is Call & Response, the dye pots will be busy, and the day will end with Nickel & Rose performing on the porch of Eliza’s Cabinet.

Call & Response has infiltrated our regular activities, too, with no better example than our Innovative Educators Institute: Comer, Wilson, and Cobb will all be master artists for the annual summer lab next week. We have been gathering local teachers each summer to work with artists, share in Lynden’s approach to place-based education, and develop cross-disciplinary K-12 curricula that integrate Lynden’s resources—field trips, artist residencies, mentoring—with classroom teaching to promote inquiry-based teaching and learning at the intersection of art and nature.

We continue to offer other forms of respite this summer: Yoga in the Garden with Heather Eiden meets on Sunday afternoons, and Kyle Denton leads a summer herb walk on July 14. Artist Jenna Knapp is back several Sunday afternoons this month with the Self-Care Studio; don’t miss this opportunity to take care of yourself among Lynden’s trees, dancers, and dye vats. The chickens are growing wings, campers are in and out each week, and we continue to plan for Lynden’s annual backyard barbecue, coming up on August 23. The proceeds from that event make it possible to offer our education programs to children for free or at reduced cost, and to cover bus transportation when schools cannot afford it.

Please note that Lynden will be closed on Wednesday, July 4 for the holiday.