Call & Response Family Free Day at Lynden Sculpture Garden, July 27
Performance collective Propelled Animals will be onsite all day, with special performances at 11:30 am and 3 pm.
Lynden opens its doors to the community on Saturday, July 27, 2019, from 10 am-4 pm for a Family Free Day featuring the artists participating in Call & Response 2019. Expect a day of family-friendly activities and performances, including a bottle tree workshop with Portia Cobb and an opportunity to make watercolor prints with Evelyn Patricia Terry. Performance collective Propelled Animals will be onsite all day, with special performances at 11:30 am and 3 pm. The sculpture garden is located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217.
Visitors are welcome to roam the grounds, visit the Bonsai Exhibit, and explore our indoor and outdoor exhibitions. Artist Gary John Gresl will send four of his wall-mounted assemblages to new homes via a free raffle, and Jenna Knapp will host a ribbon cutting ceremony for the labyrinth she has been creating on the grounds. Gresl and Knapp are both Lynden artists-in-residence. Bring a picnic to enjoy under the trees. Water and soda will be available for purchase.
For a complete schedule of performances and activities, please visit: https://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/calendar/ffd-2019
10 am-4 pm: Evelyn Patricia Terry: Printmaking: Paint to Plate to Press to Paper
Visitors of all ages are invited to drop into the art studio to learn the fundamentals of printmaking with artist Evelyn Patrica Terry and Director of Education Jeremy Stepien. Make a print that responds to Terry’s exhibition, America’s Favor/Guests Who Came to Dinner (and Stayed!)
10 am-4 pm: Outdoor Art & Nature Activities
The Master Gardener Volunteers will be stationed at the pollinator gardens celebrating all things butterfly related (10 am-4 pm); educator Claudia Orjuela and MPS intern Dani Gagliano-Deltgen will gather under the willow tree for pond exploration and to make dreamcatchers (10 am-12 pm & 1-3 pm); educator Anna Grosch and MPS intern Eh Soe invite you out to Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities for art activities and mini-tours (10 am-4 pm).
10 am-3 pm: Gary John Gresl: Give an Assemblage a Good Home
Artist Gary John Gresl continues his residency at Lynden, and his exploration of ephemerality, by raffling off four of his wall-mounted assemblage sculptures. These large, original works (the largest is 5 x 4 feet) will be distributed for free through a raffle during the Family Free Day. This is an excellent opportunity to acquire a work by one of Wisconsin’s noted artists.
11:30 am-12 pm & 3-3:30 pm: Propelled Animals
Propelled Animals is an interdisciplinary performance project with collaborative artists whose work is centered on art as social action and ritual as performance. They encourage audiences to consider the efficacy of the body, resilience, protest, and radical tenderness as strategies to fight oppression. During their residency at Lynden, collective members Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Raquel Monroe, and Heidi Wiren Bartlett will create a series of collaborative performances in response to the site and particularly to Folayemi Wilson’s installation, Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities. They will share some of the interactive dances and rituals they have created at 11:30 am and 3 pm.
12 noon-4 pm: The Labyrinth Society of Lynden Sculpture Garden: Inaugural Walk + Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
To mark the official opening of the Labyrinth artist-in-residence Jenna Knapp will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony at noon, followed by an inaugural walk. Stop by between 12 and 4 pm to enjoy this new addition to Lynden.
1-3 pm: Bottle Tree Workshop with Artist-in-Residence Portia Cobb
Artist-in-residence Portia Cobb is collaborating with sculptor Glenn Williams to make a bottle tree to place on the grounds at Lynden. Bottle trees are created by positioning bottles on the pruned branches of trees or tree-like structures placed in natural spaces, yards, or gardens. Bottle trees are encountered regularly in Southern landscapes, and it is believed that they are inspired and informed by Ki-Kongo cultural myth and spiritual practices: reflective glass, and especially the color blue, is placed as a protective talisman to protect, ward off, deflect, and trap negative energy/ghosts/haints from one’s domestic spaces. More recently, bottle trees have been reimagined as memorial objects, or as gifts of remembrance to honor the wandering spirits of those who died an untimely death. In this drop-in workshop, Cobb invites you to embellish a glass bottle. We will create our own meaning for these bottles, reimagining their utility as we choose. Bring a bottle to decorate with beads and ribbon, and write a thought, a memory, a wish, or a prayer to insert in the bottle or attach to the outside.
Call & Response is a cumulative project that gathers a community of artists who share a commitment to the radical Black imagination as a means to re-examine the past and imagine a better future. It has its origins in our work with choregrapher Reggie Wilson and visual artist Folayemi Wilson, whose installation on the grounds, Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities, anchors much of Lynden’s educational and public programming. In 2019, returning participants include textile artist Arianne King Comer, choreographer Reggie Wilson, interdisciplinary artist Portia Cobb, and chef and food scholar Scott Alves Barton. We also build the Call & Response community through residencies, exhibitions, performances, educational and public programs, and collaborations and site visits with new artists. This summer, they include visual artists Evelyn Patricia Terry and Rosemary Ollison; artist-in-residence and community organizer Kim M Khaira; visual artist Daniel Minter; and performance collective Propelled Animals.
The Lynden Sculpture Garden opens its doors to the community for Family Free Days several times a year. Our next Family Free Day is Urban Forest Fest on September 21, 2019.
About the Lynden Sculpture Garden
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 daily, 10 am-5 pm; until 7:30 pm on Wednesday evenings in the summer; closed Thursdays. Admission to the sculpture garden is $9 for adults and $7 for students and seniors; children under 6 and members are free. Annual memberships are also available.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.