INSIDE/OUTSIDE: SHANA McCAW & BRENT BUDSBERG OPENS AT LYNDEN SCULPTURE GARDEN DURING WINTER CARNIVAL, FEBRUARY 26

The Lynden Sculpture Garden opens Inside/Outside: Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg on Saturday, February 26, 2011 with a reception from 4:30-6:30 pm. The reception follows Lynden’s Winter Carnival, which takes place that day from 10 am to 4 pm. The exhibition, the third in the Inside/Outside series, remains on view through April 10, 2011.

The Lynden Sculpture Garden is located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217. Admission to the reception is free; admission to the Winter Carnival is $9 for adults and $7 for students, seniors and active military (children under 6 free and members are free). Family passes are $15 in advance (call 414.446.8794) or $20 at the door. Annual memberships are also available.

The Winter Carnival offers several opportunities for outdoor artmaking (and observing). McCaw & Budsberg will be on hand all day, completing their Outside project, “Coal-and-ice,” for the opening reception at 4:30 pm. They will reference Lynden’s origin as a 19th century farmhouse through costumes and period-specific tools. Artist and Green Gallery co-proprietor John Riepenhoff organizes YouSnow, a juried outdoor sculpture competition, and The Pond Is Our Canvas, a collaborative piece for all ages.

Inside/Outside: Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg continue to explore scale, illusion, and the dialogue between interior and exterior space in an exhibition that focuses on combustion. The miniature 19th century wooden farmhouse that has been a recurring character in their narrative will make a ghostly, stripped-down appearance on the grounds of the sculpture garden—itself a farm in the 19th century. “Coal-and-ice” is an outline of a foundation dug several inches into the cold, wintry soil. During the opening, the artists will fill the trench with coals and set it alight, leaving a residue of ash in the shape of a house. This remnant will bear an uneasy resemblance to a series of burned or burning, charred and smoke-stained houses—sometimes no more than piles of rubble—captured in large-scale photographs in the gallery. The artists exploit the photographic medium to create the illusion that these are images of real houses, real remains, but subtle clues—scale conflicts, odd or impossible viewpoints, the miniature foundation outside—point to their fictional origin.

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg have collaborated for a decade on a practice that encompasses sculpture, performance and site-specific installation. Their recent work incorporates models that enable them to consider notions of scale, deception and suspension of disbelief while examining the psychology of place, ancestral memory, and the passage of time. McCaw and Budsberg are also founding members of the WhiteBoxPainters, a performance art group specializing in large-scale, temporary public projects.

McCaw currently teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Cardinal Stritch University. Budsberg is a supervisor at the Steve Lacey 3-D Lab at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He is also a musician, and has built numerous set pieces for the theatre/film industry. The two received the Mary Nohl Fellowship for Individual Artists in the Established category in 2008.

Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin; the Nohl Fellows Exhibition at the Institute of Visual Arts (Inova) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Descendant, a solo exhibition at the Wright Museum of Art in Beloit, Wisconsin; and Current Tendencies: Ten Artists from Wisconsin at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee. In May 2011, McCaw and Budsberg will be in residence in Wendover, Utah with the Los Angeles-based Center for Land Use Interpretation.

By choosing Inside/Outside as an inaugural theme, the Lynden Sculpture Garden hopes to initiate a dialogue between the new indoor gallery and the environment--both sculpture and nature--beyond its walls; to explore Lynden’s transition from a private, domestic space to a public space; and to define Lynden’s new position within the local and regional art community. The Inside/Outside exhibitions alternate with exhibitions drawn from the Bradley Family Foundation’s collection of small sculptures, paintings and works on paper.

More on the exhibition at: http://lyndensculpturegarden.org/exhibitions/upcoming

Winter Carnival: YouSnow & The Pond Is Our Canvas

Milwaukeeans are no strangers to snow. It divides the year and provides a stark contrast between seasons. Snow is also a material for sculpture, more fleeting than bronze or stone or wood, but malleable and perfect—weather permitting--for extemporaneous expression. Snow sculpture has a long history: from anthropomorphic snowmen to snow angels and elaborate constructions carved into blocks of compressed snow.

For YouSnow, an invitational juried competition, we are particularly interested in the way we measure ourselves in snow. According to Wikipedia, the first representation of a snowman to be documented appears in the margins of a 14th century Book of Hours. How, seven centuries later, do we measure ourselves in snow? YouSnow asks artists to create a new measure of themselves in snow: part or whole, single or multiple. Projects can be additive or subtractive, abstract or representational, conceptual or literal.

The Lynden grounds will be home to more than a dozen YouSnow projects during the Winter Carnival. Artists will undertake solo and collaborative projects, as well as projects that invite public participation. Materials and technology will be very simple: snow, hands, shovels. Prizes will be awarded at 3:30 pm.

Artists of all ages are invited to participate in The Pond Is Our Canvas, a collaborative project. Using non-toxic food coloring, we will be making a large-scale painting on the little pond. Stop by anytime between 1pm and 3 pm and pick up a watering can!

More on the Winter Carnival at: http://lyndensculpturegarden.org/calendar/winter-carnival

The Lynden Sculpture Garden offers a unique experience of art in nature through its collection of more than 50 monumental sculptures sited across 40 acres of park, lake and woodland. The sculpture garden is open to art and nature lovers of all ages on Wednesdays from 10 am to 4 pm (through March 13; 6 pm thereafter) and on Sundays from 12 noon to 5 pm.

Images available at http://lyndensculpturegarden.org/press.

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