A Workshop with Jeremy Stepien

Fee: $25/ $22 members (all materials included)
Registration: Space is limited; advance registration required. Register by phone at 414-446-8794.

Lynden is offering a series of holiday giftmaking workshops between November 13 and December 11. 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.

Lynden's Jeremy Stepien guides you through the process of making a garlic basket--perfect for your own home or as a gift. Learn a traditional twining weave using a combination of willow from the sculpture garden and basket-weaving reed. We'll use raffia to add color and texture to the basic weave. No prior weaving experience required.

Free to members or with admission to the sculpture garden.

Drop by the art studio between 12:30 and 2:30 and join in this all ages workshop (best for ages 7 and up). We’ll wind natural wool from Hillspring Eco-Farm, a local organic grower, into felt vessels. This simple process creates felt forms that are both decorative and functional. Embellish your finished vessel with colorful embroidery. No experience required.

A Workshop with Jamie Lea Bertsch

Fee: $110/$99 members (all materials included and you receive a complete weaving kit, including a loom, to take home)
Registration: Space is limited; advance registration required. Register by phone at 414-446-8794.

Learn the basics of weaving on a frame loom, this time with an emphasis on pattern. We will build an understanding of weaving fundamentals, and then explore techniques to achieve texture and pattern as you embark on your own original piece--and begin your weaving adventures.

The weaving process is a labor of love, and it is likely that your work will not be finished during the workshop. Rest assured, you will be able to take your new lap loom home with you, along with enough yarn and material to complete your first piece, an instruction booklet, a new weaving vocabulary, and a knowledge of the basic weaving stitches.

Bring a bag lunch and beverages.

About Jamie Lea Bertsch

Jamie Lea Bertsch is a maker. Whether itʼs creating pattern, knitting, arranging flowers, or experimenting with natural dyes—making by hand is her favorite thing to do. She swoons over combinations of color, texture and pattern. Bertsch received her MFA in Fibers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a BFA in Graphic Design and Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She has traveled abroad, teaching art in Mae Sai, Thailand. Her design work has been featured in Domino Magazine and Wisconsin Bride, and she has shown her work at Lillstreet Gallery in Chicago and the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, New York.

A Workshop with Colin Matthes

Fee: $30/$25 members - includes an autographed copy of Leave Me, refreshments from MKE Localicious and admission to the sculpture garden. Come early to enjoy a stroll around the grounds. Register online or by phone at 414-446-8794.

Margy Stratton, founder and executive producer of Milwaukee Reads produces this series of events featuring writers of particular interest to women.

Lynden Sculpture Garden's Women's Speaker Series and Boswell Books welcome Gayle Forman, author of Leave Me, to the Lynden Sculpture Garden, Tuesday, September 20, 7-9 pm.

Gayle Forman has made a name for herself in the world of young-adult literature for her bestselling, captivating, award-winning novels, including I Was Here, Just One Day, and If I Stay, the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel that was adapted into a major motion picture. This fall with Leave Me, Forman takes the leap into adult fiction, using her trademark insight and wit to tell a story of marriage, motherhood, and friendship that will resonate with readers of all ages.

Like many workings mothers, Maribeth Klein, a forty-four-year-old magazine editor, wife, and the mother of twins in New York City, always puts herself last. One day she suffers a heart attack, and assuming her symptoms are just the stress of her very busy life, she doesn’t even realize it. After emergency bypass surgery, Maribeth’s recuperation appears to be an imposition on those who rely on her, and when the usual daily demands from her family persist, Maribeth begins to fear what will happen to herself, and her children, if she continues to backslide. So she does what so many mothers secretly fantasize about doing– she packs her bags, buys a one-way train ticket, and goes off the grid. Although this decision is extreme, she knows that her heart will never heal if she stays. Far from the demands of family and career, and with the help of liberating new friendships, she discovers reasons for leaving even she didn’t even understand, and answers she didn’t know she was seeking.

“The novel may have begun as a cathartic revenge fantasy – the mother who finally says, ‘enough!’– but as I got deeper, it evolved into a story about the complexity of marriage, motherhood, and friendship, the unsaid things that interfere with our ability to take care of ourselves,” explains Forman. “By the end, Maribeth’s shocking choice to run away, to take care of herself – to be selfish – no longer felt quite so shocking or so selfish to me. It felt like something that she was entitled to. Like something we are all, at times, entitled to.”

About the Author

Gayle Forman is an award-winning, internationally bestselling author and journalist. She is the author of Just One Day and Just One Year, and the companion e-novella Just One Night, as well as the New York Times bestsellers If I Stay and Where She Went. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters. For more information, visit her website.

Fee: $110/ $99 members (all materials included)
Registration: Registration closed. For information on future workshops, sign up for our e-list.

Enameling is a timeless art form that involves sifting colored glass onto a copper base and fusing it in a kiln to create shiny, colorful works of art. In this workshop, Leslie Perrino teaches the basics of enameling, covering a variety of techniques including stencils, sgraffito, threads, silver foil, screens, and decals. You will complete sample pieces for practice, and can then choose from a variety of projects ranging from wearable items to small bowls. No experience required, and all materials supplied.

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.

Presented in collaboration with Woodland Pattern Book Center.

A Workshop with Bruce Knackert

A Workshop with Colin Matthes