Kites Over Lynden, April 26

Lynden will mark the transition from winter to spring on Saturday, April 26, 2025, from 12 pm to 4 pm, when International Sculpture Day coincides with Earth Week. We’ll celebrate International Sculpture Day by making our own small 3D objects and launching them into the sky: a revival of our popular Kites Over Lynden. Artists will be on hand, including Sarah Davitt, Yevgeniya Kaganovich, and Gary John Gresl, to answer questions, demonstrate processes, and lead hands-on artmaking. There will be a tree walk, tree planting, and some tree giveaways. Bring your gardening gloves and join Team Lynden as we remove garlic mustard and dame’s rocket from the ravines as part of the Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium’s annual Garlic Mustard Pull-A-Thon. The Lynden Sculpture Garden is located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217. This event is free and open to the public.

More information and complete schedule at: https://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/calendar/kites

In the 1970s, Tal Streeter, whose restored sculpture Delicate Balance rises above Lynden’s rain garden, moved to Asia to pursue kite making and kite flying. He continued building large-scale kites and large-scale sculptures, both sky-oriented practices, for the rest of his life. He wrote several books about kites, including The Art of the Japanese Kite, which his website describes as “a classic introduction to Japanese culture via the thread of kite making and kite flying.” Bilingual educator Claudia Orjuela will be running our kite-making workshop.

Milwaukee Vision Zero will be on hand with another moving sculpture, Sarah Davitt’s Moving City. Also known as the Art Car, The Moving City emerged from the City of Milwaukee Public Artist in Residence program and is designed to raise awareness about reckless driving. Join Sarah to make safety patches that advance the conversation about safe driving.

Former artist-in-residence Gary John Gresl will be popping up an outdoor sculpture in one of his favorite spots. Sonja Thomsen‘s exhibition in the gallery, and then down became up, is filled with three-dimensional work. In addition, her commissioned outdoor sculpture, embrace (transverse), sits on the ledge of the pool pavilion. You can see it through the window in the gallery as well as from outside.

You will also find artist-in-residence Yevgeniya Kaganovich on the grounds working on her durational project, Tree Intuits Chair, and its newest extension, Slow Growing in the Time of Trees. Tree Intuits Chair, begun in 2019, explores the existence and experience of things, not through a human lens, but through their own unique phenomenology. According to Kaganovich, “Our goal is to examine the various lives a tree can live out when acted upon by humans, changing into furniture, paper, and sometimes back again, through the lens of the objects themselves. With this project we ask: if a Tree was to intuit a Chair, what would it be like? If a Tree was able to foresee its existence and Chair, what would it think of it? By growing and shaping trees into chairs, through a process of bending and grafting, this piece imagines the Tree’s conception and understanding of the Chair.” Slow Growing in the Time of Trees considers and contextualizes the time and materiality of the trees themselves, as well as the trees in relation to the human and non-human species that come into contact and engage in transformations with them. Throughout the last growing season, Kaganovich and her collaborators have created speculative forms out of reused plastic bags and cardboard, inoculated grain and straw medium with three varieties of oyster mushroom spores, and situated the forms in and around the trees, documenting the ways in which these cultivated fruiting bodies develop and distort Kaganovich’s fabricated forms. On International Sculpture Day, Kaganovich will be cleaning up the installations and preparing the trees for the annual grafting process.

Trees are also at the center of the Lynden land team’s mini–bioblitz. There will be a tree walk, tree planting, and some tree giveaways. We will be doing our bit for small trees by participating in the Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium’s annual Garlic Mustard Pull-A-Thon. We hope you will join Team Lynden as we remove garlic mustard and dame’s rocket from the ravines, giving the trees space to thrive.

About the Lynden

The Lynden operates as a laboratory at the intersection of art, nature, and culture. Since opening to the public in 2010, we have worked with artists, educators, students, and our community to create, support, and share experiences that integrate our collection of more than 50 monumental sculptures and temporary installations, Lynden’s community of artists, and the natural ecology of our 40-acre site. The sculpture garden is open to art and nature lovers of all ages daily, 10 am-4 pm; closed Thursdays. Admission is free. Annual memberships are 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.