Lynden Celebrates Spooky Season with Zack Pieper’s Site-Specific GHOST GARDEN

The Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 W. Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217, opens Zack Pieper’s GHOST GARDEN, an installation made specifically for the windows of Lynden’s main entrance, on Sunday, November 2, 2025, with a celebration from 2-6 pm. Join us for A Harvest of the Ghosts and, at sundown, a Ghost Illumination. The Out There series enlivens the proceedings with three spooky outdoor performances: Julian Lynch (Madison), Barbouille Hymn (Peter Barrickman, Xavier Leplae, Didier Leplae, Andrew Kaiser – Milwaukee), and A Crushed Rose” (Alisa Rodriguez – Milwaukee). Enjoy hot cider, s’mores, and bonfires as the sun goes down and the GHOST GARDEN comes alive. The event is free. Dress for the weather (feel free to give your Halloween costume one more outing) and consider carpooling—parking is limited and it’s better for the planet. GHOST GARDEN remains on view through November 22, 2025.

More information:

Zack Pieper: GHOST GARDEN | Opening Celebration and Out There Music Performances

For ten years, Zack Pieper has “haunted” public and private spaces across Milwaukee and beyond, creating large-scale mosaics and site-specific installations out of thousands of ghosts drawn on post-it notes that are then affixed to shopfront or gallery windows. This yearly marathon drawing ritual serves simultaneously as a miniature gallery, a pop-up cathedral, a seasonal decoration, and an ongoing, portable, public lifework.

This year, Pieper is spending a two-week residency at Lynden, filling Lynden’s front windows with a mosaic of thousands of post-its—or “ghost-its.” Produced during night-time drawing sessions, the ghost-its are carefully arranged in our windows by day. Viewable every day (except Thursdays) from 10 am to 5 pm starting November 2, GHOST GARDEN will be at its spookiest as the sun goes down and the site-specific installation is illuminated by light within the house.

Previous hauntings have included locations such as Cotyledon Arts, and Current Space Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland; Botan Floral Shop in Buffalo, New York; The Green Gallery, Real Tinsel, and Lion’s Tooth Bookstore in Milwaukee. During the busy 2025 Ghost Season, Pieper has been concurrently creating a collaborative ghost mosaic with art students, children, and library patrons at the Shorewood Public Library, 3920 N Murray Ave, Shorewood, WI 53211. That installation is now on view.

About the Artists

Zack Pieper is a Milwaukee artist whose work spans poetry, performance, essays, songs, radio plays, and visual art. His writing and images have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Milwaukee Anthology, and various small press publications and ephemera. In 2019, Adjunct Press released SAME HERE, selections from a decade of poems. He is the co-founder of Activities Archive, an audio archive of experimental pop, performance and sound art, spanning several decades of Milwaukee-affiliated multimedia artists. Each year, Pieper draws thousands of ghosts on post-it notes, ceremoniously placing them in the windows of various public sites.

The Out There series is a Milwaukee-based performance series, providing an ongoing opportunity for Midwest poets, musicians, and performance artists to share their unique experiences of sound in outdoor spaces such as parks, green spaces, and other distinct locations. This is Out There’s second appearance at Lynden. https://www.outthereseries.com/

ABOUT THE LYNDEN SCULPTURE GARDEN

The Lynden Sculpture Garden 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-5 pm; closed Thursdays. Thanks in part to the generosity of the Mangiamele Arts Foundation, admission is free. Learn more about visitor guidelines here: https://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/visit. 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.