Willy's blog

The final awardee has been announced in the 2011 Winter Cycle of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund. The fund provides support to greater Milwaukee artists who are exhibiting or screening work outside the immediate four-county area. The funds in the first subcycle have now been expended, and the fund will reopen June 1st.

Bilhenry Walker: To exhibit 12 table top to mid-size sculptures in a solo exhibition at the Caridi Gallery in North Miami, Florida.

The 1960s and 1970s, when Peg Bradley was amassing the collection now on view at Lynden, were rich and important decades for modern sculpture. The founding of the NEA, the proliferation of Percent for Art programs, and growing interest on the part of artists in showing work outdoors and exploring industrial fabrication resulted in an outpouring of new work.

The question of how to make these very large works—too large for an artist’s studio, and often requiring highly specialized fabrication for their realization—was one that Donald Lippincott and Roxanne Everett set about answering when they founded Lippincott, Inc. in North Haven, Connecticut in 1966. Lippincott was the first fabricator dedicated exclusively to making large scale sculpture, and the model Lippincott and Everett established for producing and financing these projects launched a new era of collaboration between artists and fabricators.

In July of 2011, Jonathan Lippincott, Don’s son and author of Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s, came to the Lynden Sculpture Garden for an illustrated talk. According to Jonathan, when Peg Bradley visited North Haven in 1969, she “delighted Don and Roxanne by buying [William] Underhill’s Ursa Major and [Clement] Meadmore’s Upstart I on the spot.” She later purchased Meadmore’s Double Up, Isaac Witkin’s Kumo and Trio by George Sugarman, as well as acquiring works from other sources that were originally fabricated at Lippincott. These artists and many others including Claes Oldenburg, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly, came to Lippincott, and Jonathan grew up among them and their projects.

Please enjoy the talk, presented here in full. For more info on Large Scale, please go to the official website.

Two more awardees have been announced in the 2011 Winter Cycle of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund. The fund provides support to greater Milwaukee artists who are exhibiting or screening work outside the immediate four-county area. This round’s awardees will be taking work to Los Angeles and Daytona Beach, Florida.

James Charles: To participate alongside fellow awardee Jessica Kaminski in a group exhibition, “Replacing Home,” at the Jaus Gallery in Los Angeles, curated by Jennifer Johung and featuring artists whose work appears in her book, “Replacing Home: From Primordial Hut to Digital Network in Contemporary Art.” Charles has been asked to respond to the subject of the exhibition with work that addresses the traces of function within the built environment. He will be installing two new exhibited pieces.

Blanche Brown: Brown has had three pieces selected for “Faces of Color,” an exhibition of works by contemporary artists who use the faces of African Americans or people of color in their work. The exhibition is sponsored by Bethune-Cookman University, Daytona Beach, Florida, in celebration of Black History Month and will take place in their Performing Arts Center gallery.

Congratulations to the first seven awardees in the 2011 Winter Cycle of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Suitcase Export Fund. The fund provides support to greater Milwaukee artists who are exhibiting or screening work outside the immediate four-county area. This group of artists will be taking work to Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New Haven, Santa Fe, New York City, Long Island City, and Leeds, UK. A small amount of money remains in the Winter Cycle fund; applicants will find further information here. The Summer Cycle opens June 1.

Paul Druecke: Druecke will participate in the public programming of Habeas Lounge in Los Angeles. Habeas Lounge coordinates events throughout the country to promote civic dialogue; they are also developing a permanent presence in LA. They have invited Druecke to give a presentation on his Near Here project (part of his 2010 Nohl Fellowship exhibition) and he will also spend time researching and identifying locations and support for a site-specific plaque in LA.

Brent Coughenour: Coughenour will be touring the east coast to perform Mysterium Cosmographicum, a piece he completed as part of his 2010 Nohl Fellowship. The tour includes screening and performance dates at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (as part of the Paradigm Lecture Series) and at the Yale Film Studies Program Graduate Colloquium.

Nicole Ridgway: To create a Sentimental Construction, an ephemeral, site-conditioned, publicly performed architectural structure made primarily of rope as part of Performance Studies International at the University of Leeds, UK. Ridgway and her collaborators will conduct a seminar about their work, and will involve local people as they make their structure.

Jim Zwadlo: For an exhibition at Beals & Abbate Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his first solo show outside of Wisconsin.

Jessica Kaminski: To participate in a group exhibition, “Replacing Home,” at the Jaus Gallery in Los Angeles, curated by Jennifer Johung and featuring artists whose work appears in her book, “Replacing Home: From Primordial Hut to Digital Network in Contemporary Art.” Kaminski is showing two photographs and a dress she made in collaboration with Johung. This work is part of her “Home Project”—a body of work that explores the concept of home through photographs and conceptual garments.

Richard Taylor: For his third solo exhibition at OK Harris in New York City. Taylor will be showing six large wall sculptures and three standing sculptures.

Kay Knight: To participate in “International Painting NYC,” a group show at the Jeffrey Leder Gallery in Long Island City, NY. Knight will attend the opening and her painting will be included in a publication related to the exhibition.

We have some exciting news for those of you interested in learning more about Lynden and the sculpture collection: we are now on Wikipedia! You can find the entry for Lynden here, and we will be adding content about the collection to Wikipedia (and to our website) throughout the coming weeks.

2010 Nohl Fellow Chris James Thompson has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help complete his first feature film Jeff, excerpts of which were screened as part of the 2010 Greater Milwaukee Foundation Mary L. Nohl Fellowships Exhibition at Inova. The AV Club wrote about Thompson's campaign last week. Click here to read their coverage, and here to go to the Kickstarter campaign.

The warm weather we were graced with this past weekend was ideal for Dressing the Monument: A Reading by David Robbins and a Video Program. Robbins read outside, seated at his Open-Air Writing Desk, with attendees gathered around it.

After the reading, the crowd moved indoors to the conference room for a video screening, which featured works by Chris Burden, Stephen Wetzel and Hiroshi Teshigahara.

Thanks to David Robbins for reading, and to everyone that attended! Now if only the weather could have hung around...

The George Rickey sculpture Peristyle--Three Lines (1963-1964) has been moved indoors to keep the cows company for the winter.

In its outdoor habitat.

Photo: Claire Ruzicka.

A few adventurous painters and many non-painting visitors turned out on a beautiful day for what we hope is the first of many opportunities to paint en plein air at Lynden. Pamela Ruschman was one of the painting visitors, and you can read about and see her work over on her blog.

As winter approaches, some of the sculptures need to be relocated. Today, Patrick and Sergio are busy moving Samuel Buri's piece Des Vaches: Mo, Ni, Que (1971-1976) -- more commonly known as The Cows -- from their summer pasture to their winter home indoors next to the swimming pool.

In procession, waiting to be moved inside.