Installation and celebration on grounds
Opening of Eneida Sanches: Material Trance |
After two years, we are coming to the end of this phase of Daniel Minter’s two-year project, In the Healing Language of Trees, a natural act of transformation restructured for curing many ills. Drawing on traditions of the African Diaspora, and invoking axé, the “spiritual force that resides in all living things,” Minter envisioned an ash trunk adorned with necklaces of giant, hand-carved wooden beads created in collaboration with community members, including those already engaged in Lynden’s Call & Response and HOME refugee programming.
On Saturday, June 17, 2023, we gather friends of the project, Call & Response artists, and the public to install Daniel Minter’s work on the grounds of the Lynden Sculpture Garden. We will start the day by stringing wooden beads and stamping cloth garments. After lunch, we will don our coats and adornments and assemble for a procession out to the tree. The artists who created the “healing coats” with Arianne King Comer that were recently exhibited at Lynden will wear them in the procession. We will take time to honor the tree and all it has given us. In an act of natural healing, we will offer our gifts to the tree.
The Lynden Sculpture Garden is located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217. The sculpture garden is open daily 10 am-5 pm; closed Thursdays. All events on June 17 are free.
Many Milwaukeeans have been a part of HEALING LANGUAGE: the K-12 teachers in our Innovative Educators Institute; the summer campers who joined our Whittlers camp and then our Whittlers Club; the HOME Refugee Steering Committee, which participated in our first (virtual) workshop with Daniel and Arianne two years ago; the more than one thousand children and youth who carved with Minter over Zoom during the pandemic; the visitors who attended workshops whenever Daniel was in residence. New projects emerged as Call & Response artists Folayemi Wilson, Portia Cobb, Reggie Wilson, Scott Barton, and Arianne King Comer spent time with Minter at Lynden; in Portland, Maine, where he lives and co-directs the Indigo Arts Alliance; or at their own home bases.
As part of the celebration, we will be opening Eneida Sanches’s exhibition, Material Trance, in the gallery. Sanches was invited into Call & Response by Daniel Minter, and her exhibition expands on a collaboration begun with Minter in 2019. The exhibition remains on view through October 29, 2023. We will also unveil a new birdhouse sculpture Minter has created in response to Folayemi Wilson’s Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities.
More information on the celebration: https://www.
More information on Material Trance: https://www.
Participants and observers are welcome all day and at any time. You may participate in the procession by wearing the bead necklace and stamped coat you make in the morning, or you can arrive at 2 pm to observe the procession and installation. The following day we conclude this phase of the project by hosting a symposium with Minter and his chosen interlocutors on Embodying Memory, Medicine, and Power in Material and Process.
Schedule
This project was made possible in part by the Joyce Foundation through a 2021 Joyce Award to Daniel Minter and Lynden Sculpture Garden; the Brico Fund; the Chipstone Foundation; the Greater Milwaukee Foundation; the Herzfeld Foundation; Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies; the Ruth Foundation for the Arts; and several individual donors.
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-5 pm; closed Thursdays. Admission is free. Annual memberships are available. |
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