Fee: $85/ $75 members (all materials included)
Registration: Registration is closed. For info on future workshops, sign up for our e-list.

Gourds are believed to be the earliest plant cultivated by man and have been in use for thousands of years. Many cultures have used gourds for functional as well as decorative purposes. Gourds were used primarily as vessels for containing food and water, but have also been used as bowls, utensils, musical instruments, jewelry, toys, boats, rafts, hats, and body wear. In addition, gourds have been decorated with spiritual images and used in worship.

In this workshop, you will use a prepared hard-shelled gourd (when dried, these gourds take on the characteristics of wood and can last forever) to create your own work of gourd art by embellishing it with Danish cord and beads. Kate Shoemaker will take you through all the steps of the process and will provide the necessary tools and materials.

Please bring a bag lunch and beverages.

About Kate Shoemaker
After more than 30 years as an elementary teacher, Kate Shoemaker is now able to devote more time to creating gourd art. She continues to experiment with new forms, techniques, and finishes. For Shoemaker, the most exciting element of creating gourd art is the unique characteristics of each gourd: “I'm never quite sure what a piece will become, until it is complete. I love to use deep, rich colors to enhance the natural beauty of each gourd.”

Yenepa

Fee: $20/ $15 members (all materials included)
Registration: Advance registration required. Register by phone at 414-446-8794.

This workshop is part of Lynden's Garden Series, a series of workshops that takes a broad view of what it means to garden. Whether you consider yourself a backyard gardener, a forager, a farmer, or a steward of the land, the Garden Series will have something for you. From formal garden design to identifying and learning to use wild growing plants, we span a range of techniques and philosophies. Because of the range of subjects covered, these classes can be enjoyed by new and experienced gardeners alike.

In recent years, it has become commonplace to view invasive plants—even the rhetoric is inflammatory—in wholly negative terms. Herbalist Angela Kingsawan suggests that we reframe our relationship to these plants by moving beyond an eradication approach to recognize their beneficial properties and uses. She invites us to open up to the possibilities of healthy living using plants that we come across every day. In this workshop you will learn how to properly identify, harvest, and make all-natural body care products using common weeds.

About Angela Kingsawan
Angela Kingsawan is an Indigenous person of Raramuri, Tigua, and Mexica descent. She was born and raised on the south side of Milwaukee and uses her unique perspective as an urban Native person to teach modern herbalism infused with Native tradition to impact and empower communities of color. By providing decolonized education, seed exchanges, and growing culturally significant plants in an urban setting, Kingsawan strives to help community members remember their cultural ways of being. She currently works as a garden manager at a local Milwaukee non-profit in the neighborhood she grew up in and has been an herbalist in her community for over 20 years.

Fee: Free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden.
Registration: Advance registration required. Register by phone at 414-446-8794.

Come walk Lynden's grounds after dark with educator Claudia Orjuela to discover what is happening in the light of the full hunter’s moon and in the shadows of the sculptures. A bonfire and treats await us at the end.

Fee: $20/ $15 members (all materials included)
Registration: Registration is closed. For information on future sessions, sign up for our email newsletter.

This workshop is part of Lynden's Garden Series, a series of workshops that takes a broad view of what it means to garden. Whether you consider yourself a backyard gardener, a forager, a farmer, or a steward of the land, the Garden Series will have something for you. From formal garden design to identifying and learning to use wild growing plants, we span a range of techniques and philosophies. Because of the range of subjects covered, these classes can be enjoyed by new and experienced gardeners alike.

As fall prepares us for winter, so does the medicine found in the natural world. Stroll Lynden’s grounds with herbalist Kyle Denton, foraging the healing plants found in the wilds of southeast Wisconsin. Inside, we’ll prepare these herbs, sample them, and discuss their energetic qualities. Drawing on folklore, ancient wisdom, plant identification, and science, Denton will expand your understanding of our relationship to the natural world.

About Kyle Denton

Kyle Denton is an herbalist and owner of Tippecanoe Herbs and Apothecary, a Milwaukee clinical herbal practice and medicine-making company. Denton applies his knowledge of Ayurveda and traditional Western herbalism by creating herbal medicine preparations from locally wildcrafted plants; teaching courses; and offering clinical consultations.

In Collaboration with Woodland Pattern Book Center

Fee: $50/ $45 members of Lynden or Woodland Pattern. For special pricing for educators, click here.
Registration: Advance registration required. Register by phone at 414-446-8794.

In this three-hour workshop, writer and longtime arts educator Peter Markus will pull from twenty-five years of teaching creative writing in the public schools of Detroit to offer teachers and artist educators a variety of methods and model poems to bring back into their own classrooms. Markus believes there is a poet in every child and is coming to Milwaukee to share that belief. 

Join Peter Markus for a reading and Q&A on Sunday, October 20, from 2-3:30 pm at the Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, WI 53212. This reading is free and open to the public.

About Peter Markus
Peter Markus is the author of Inside My Pencil: Teaching Poetry in Detroit Public Schools, as well as six other books of fiction, among them The Fish and the Not Fish and We Make Mud, both from Dzanc Books. His fiction has appeared in such places as Chicago Review, Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, and BOMB, and his essays on teaching poetry to youth have appeared frequently in Teachers & Writers Magazine. He is the Senior Writer with InsideOut Literary Arts of Detroit and is a special lecturer in Creative Writing at Oakland University.

Free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden. 
Younger children should be accompanied by an adult. One project per person, please.

Give the gift of the sculpture garden--or at least a tiny bit of it. Holiday season is upon us and we will be making terrariums—miniature environments—that can be worn on a string, ribbon or chain. Choose among small glass bottles and vials and an assortment of natural materials to create your own unique, hand-made gift. Select dried materials that require no attention or construct a living pendant that will grow with your care. (Note that living pendants require water 3-5 times a week and at least 8 hours of indirect sunlight.) At 2 pm we’ll learn to fold an origami box to wrap the gift. Package your pendant with a Lynden membership for a gift that lasts all year long.

Fee: $110/$99 members (all materials included)
Registration: Registration is closed. For information on future sessions, sign up for our email newsletter.

Participants will produce a series of pendants by collaging materials and covering them in resin. First, you’ll make a mini-collage by choosing from a large selection of decorative papers, photos, and small objects--charms, beads, shells, etc.—and arranging them in a diminutive pendant tray. Then the tray will be filled with clear resin and will harden into a unique pendant. The possibilities are endless! Learn how to prep and reduce bubble formation to get lovely results and expect to bring home at least four pendants by the end of the day. Students are encouraged to bring their own materials and mementos, or collect items on Lynden’s grounds, if desired. No experience required, and all materials supplied. Bring a bag lunch and beverages, and dress for the weather if you would like to do some outdoor collecting.

Note: Students will need to bring boxes or containers to carry their pendants home. You will be transporting curing resin which needs to stay flat and be protected from dust. Low, even boxes with lids (plastic or cardboard shoe boxes, takeout food containers, clamshell containers, Tupperware, etc.). Your pieces will need to be taped down and put in a flat part of the car, such as the back floor.

About Leslie Perrino

Leslie Perrino is an artist and "art evangelist" who loves to share the power of art and creativity with people, particularly in her beloved areas of metals and enameling. Her artwork is a quirky mix of traditional and found objects, most recently combining computer/electrical components with enamels. She is a charismatic and effective teacher who encourages skill building and exploration of the medium.

Fee: $90/$80 members (all materials included)
Registration: Registration is closed. For information on future sessions, sign up for our e-list.

Marbling is the ancient art of "floating" paints on a water bath, then combing and raking them into intricate patterns. In this workshop, you will learn how to apply acrylic paints to a water bath and create beautiful one-of-a-kind papers. You will go home with 12 or more of your own papers for use in your next project, from bookbinding to card making to paper crafting. Wear your "painting clothes," and consider bringing an apron. Bring a bag lunch and beverages.

About Cary Suneja

Cary Suneja is a bookbinder and marble artist who learned her craft at the Book Restoration Co. in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where she trained with James Twomey. She opened the Tea Cup Bindery in Menomonee Falls in 2006.

A Workshop with David Cobb and David Weissman

Fee: $50/$45 members (includes all materials and snacks)
Registration: Registration is closed. Sign up for our email newsletter for information on future sessions.

Lynden is offering a series of holiday giftmaking workshops in November and December. They range from simple activities suitable for families with smaller children to more advanced workshops for adults. To enhance the celebratory spirit, we will have light refreshments available for participants. Whether you are making a gift for yourself or another, these workshops should provide a cheerful atmosphere for art making as we head into winter. To see a complete list of holiday giftmaking workshops, visit our Workshops page.

Join David Cobb and David Weissman, co-founders of the Milwaukee Craft Guild, in the Lynden shop as they take you through the steps of constructing your very own cutting board. The two Davids will guide you through wood selection, gluing, sanding, and finishing to create a unique family heirloom. No prior woodworking experience is needed. The workshop concludes with bread, cheese, and wine to authenticate the boards
 

About the Milwaukee Craft Guild

The Milwaukee Craft Guild is a non-profit organization that helps adults learn crafts through a program of free mentoring. https://www.milwaukeecraftguild.org/

All Shapes of Arrival events are free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden.

Open Kitchen (OK) re-opens its cross-cultural, regional, seasonal food and thought exchange with the public with a series of events that explore the diasporic experience. These participatory events emanate from the project residencies Open Kitchen hosts here in Milwaukee. The Shapes of Arrival events will take place in and around an Open Kitchen installation on Lynden’s grounds.

Open Kitchen residents Patricia Nguyen, John Lee, and Hai Minh Thi Nguyen compose a Milwaukee-Vietnam index of aromas, flavors, and textures in the context of the ideas and beliefs of a diasporic experience. What is the taste of home? The smell? Throughout their residency, the collective will be working on Sống, a cookbook and archival project of the Vietnamese American community of Chicago. Sống translated means to live, liveliness, and raw. Sống is an active verb reflecting the liveliness of the people and stories that will be featured in the book. In addition, Sống works with the raw material of people's stories and the fresh ingredients used in Vietnamese cuisine to capture a taste of the homeland while fusing in new flavors. The cookbook will include interviews, recipes, photographs, drawings, and a history of Vietnamese migration to Chicago.

As an adjunct to this collective residency work, Open Kitchen has also invited a group of Chicago- and Milwaukee-based projects and individuals—Inga, Michelin, Kim Khaira, Angela Kingsawan--to a co-lecture and conversation on imagining a sensual archive. This is a Call & Response event.

Open Kitchen: Shapes of Arrival Events

Scents of Home: Sensorial Workshop, August 10, 1-3 pm
Common Scents: Edible Installation & Conversation, August 24, 1-5 pm
The Sensual Archive of Diasporic Peoples in Relation to the Naming of Things: A Lecture and Conversation, August 31, 1-3 pm

About the Artists

Open Kitchen is organized by Rudy Medina and Alyx Christensen. The project engages critical conversations on food, society and culture, local and at-large. By organizing food-related socials, seasonal residencies, counter-disciplinary collaborations, and satellite installations, conversations are collected, collaged, and open to the public.


Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Her research and artistic practice emerges from a place of departure, rupture, presence, and possibilities as a child of refugees. Through embodied research, performance, installation, and community engagement she explores ecologies of freedom, migration, borders, and war to reveal histories of violence and imagine decolonial futures. Patricia has over 15 years experience working in arts education, community development, and human rights in the United States and Vietnam. As a performance artist, she has performed at the Nha San Collective in Vietnam, Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago, Prague Quadrennial, Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She is co-founder and executive director of Axis Lab, a community centered arts and architecture organization in Chicago. She is also Director of Undergraduate Studies and Assistant Professor of Instruction in Asian American Studies at Northwestern University, where she earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies.

John Lee is an architectural designer and photographer who has lived in Chicago for 10 years. Lee’s work seeks what mnemonic possibilities can arise in notions of home, displacement, and space through the built and natural environment. His work is committed to cultivating places of possibilities through architectural design, as material, form, and content conjure a deeply affective relationship to history, people, and ongoing struggle for freedom.  John Lee has a masters in architecture degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His design work has been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, alongside commissions and recognitions from established institutions such as Northwestern University, AIA Chicago, Art Works Projects, Propeller Fund and recently published photographic work in the Chicago Reader. John is also co-founder and co-director of Axis Lab, a nonprofit arts and architecture organization committed to advocating for inclusive and equitable development on Argyle Street, an historic port of entry for immigrants and refugees.   

Hai Minh Thi Nguyen is an artist and educator whose work highlights the invisible, effective labor of women. From large paper cuts to sewing construction, Hai Minh seeks to center stories that have traditionally been on the margin.

Angela Kingsawan is an indigenous person of Raramuri, Tigua, and Mexica descent. She was born and raised on the Southside of Milwaukee and uses her unique perspective as an urban native person to teach modern herbalism infused with native tradition to impact and empower communities of color. By providing decolonized education, seed exchanges, and growing culturally significant plants in an urban setting, Angela strives to help community members remember their cultural ways of being. She currently works as a garden manager at a local Milwaukee non-profit in the neighborhood she grew up in and has been an herbalist in her community for over 20 years.

Michelin, a project of Rudy Medina and Bennett Westling, is a lecture-related space located in Riverwest, above Company Brewing. 

Inga (Jacob Lindgren, Alan Medina, Malia Haines-Stewart) is a bookshop and events space in Chicago with a focus on independently published titles in art, design, film, and theory. 

Kim M Khaira is a community worker and artist based in Milwaukee from Penang, Malaysia, whose current work draws on the sense of home, creating home, and of making “sense” of the literal and abstract. She is exploring these themes in Pulang Balik: I Am Going Home Too her residency project at Lynden.


More information:
www.axislab.org
www.patricianguyen.info
www.durational.co
https://i-n-g-a.com/