Director's Note 9/1/12
It’s Labor Day, and there are people strolling outside my window, enjoying the sunshine before what so often feels like the unofficial start of fall. By the time you get this, you will have embarked on all those serious fall activities—school, work—and you will feel the pace picking up as you make your way through your daily life.
We have been enjoying our own little programming frenzy here, imagining the future even as we watched the last of the summer camps, workshops and events unfold. We’ve been planning autumn classes and workshops; scheduling exhibitions, residencies and artist projects; breathing new life into series that took the summer off.
In addition to devising new programs and expanding old ones, we’ve been searching for rhythms for events that have heretofore occurred sporadically. Dog Days will now be on the calendar every month, and we hope both you and your dogs will be on hand to observe the changes in the landscape as we move from summer, to fall, to winter. There’s still plenty of time to see Roy Staab’s new work, Chiral Formation, in the Little Lake, and to catch up on the latest Inside/Outside exhibition featuring Will Pergl and Shona Macdonald (the latter two artists will be giving a talk on September 20).
Christine Kozik offers the first of our fall workshops, Natural Dyes, on Saturday, September 8. She’ll be followed by Thea Kovac with Put Your Muse to Work on October 21 and Kelly Lahl with another Silk Scarf Painting workshop on November 10. Registration for all these workshops is limited, so please sign up as soon as you can.
The eight-week session of Fall Studio Classes begins September 22 and runs through mid-November. Kids’ classes (ages 4-15) focus on three-dimensional artmaking--though we will also do plenty of painting, drawing and collaging--and make use of Lynden’s special resources: the collection of monumental sculpture and 40 acres of park, lake and woodland. Classes meet once a week and include Garden Animals (ages 4-5); Explorers’ Studio: Environments (ages 6-9); and Sculpture: Materials & Processes (ages 8-12).
New this semester: a morning session of Materials & Processes suitable for homeschoolers; Coracle Craft, a parent/child boat-building workshop that runs for three consecutive Saturdays beginning September 22; and Watercolor at Lynden, our first weekly studio class for adults.
The Educators’ Open House returns on October 20 and the 2012-2013 School’s Out Workshops are already on the calendar, too. If you don’t have school on October 26, join us at Lynden as we make Solar-Powered Sculptures. Fall family workshops include Wool Felt Marbles (October 28), Willow Reed Basket Weaving (November 18) and a Holiday Giftmaking Workshop (December 2).
At the end of September we welcome French artist Colombe Marcasiano for a month-long residency. She will be living here and making a new work on site (to be unveiled at a reception on October 28), so be sure to stop by to say hello. We are grateful to the Cultural Services of the French Embassy for supporting our first extended artist residency at Lynden.
