Photos of the Rabbit Island: Works and Research 2010-2013 exhibition at the DeVos Art Museum in Marquette, Michigan. Additional photos from the opening as well as installation shots can be found on the DeVos Art Museum Flickr page.
The exhibition runs until November 17th. It is our hope that this show helps define and advance the concept that the artist has a responsibility to consider that which he/she creates from a fundamental perspective, and serves as a celebration of the idea that wilderness is, indeed, a grand symbol of civilization. Thanks again to the organizers at Northern Michigan University and all artists involved.
Press release from the DeVos Art Museum. Come join us tomorrow.
Rabbit Island: Works and Research 2010-2013
We’re very excited to announce the opening of “Rabbit Island: Works and Research 2010-2013” tonight at the DeVos Art Museum in Marquette, Michigan. The show will run from October 11th to November 17th.
The island’s residency program, in beta stage since 2010, has welcomed over 50 artists, designers, musicians, writers, chefs and other creative thinkers, yet the island has been left in its native state. As the official residency program is set to launch in 2014, this exhibition looks back on the past three years of projects inspired by and created on the island. It is both an experiment in and discourse on the intersection of creation, consumption and conservation, ideas we feel very strongly about and would like to push to the forefront of our culture.
The exhibition features works by Emilie Lee, Andrew Ranville, Charlotte X.C. Sullivan, Colin Curry, Cabin-Time 3 (Sarah Darnell, Ryan Greaves, Geoffrey Holstad, Isabella Martin, Miles Mattison, Colin McCarty, Mary Rothlisberger), LoT Office for Architecture (Leonidas Trampoukis & Eleni Petaloti), David Buth/Summer Journeys/Christina Mrozik, David Drennen, Emily Julka, Helen Lovelee, Lucy Engleman, Rob Gorski, Sara Maynard, Tony Cenicola and Will Holman. A full color, fully illustrated catalogue is available for purchase.
October 11 – November 17, 2013
The opening reception is Friday, October 11th, from 6-8pm, featuring live music by Jen Koppin and a culinary collaboration between NMU’s Chef Nathan Mileski and Chef Kelly Geary, former Rabbit Island Chef-in-Residence and Chef-Proprietor, Sweet Deliverance, NYC.
Andrew will be making a presentation about the Rabbit Island Residency tomorrow, October 1st, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He’ll be speaking about the foundation of the program and what we have in store for the future at an ArtPrize event titled “Artist-Run Michigan”. Some info from the event website:
An incomplete inventory of artist-run initiatives in Michigan, featuring Paul Amenta of SiTE:LAB, Jerome Chu of Flint Public Art Project, Jenn Schaub of Avenue for the Arts, Geoffrey Holstad of Cabin Time, Wesley Taylor of Complex Movements, and Andrew Ranville of Rabbit Island Artist Residency. Each will give a short presentation about the past and future of their projects.
The talks kick off at 7pm. For those of you in the area come on out and say hello and ask any questions. The event is free and open to the public.
Congratulations: 2014 Supported Residents
We are excited to announce the awarded residencies for next summer. The following participants will receive funding to travel to the island starting June 2014 and their work will be featured in an exhibition and publication at the DeVos Art Museum in August-September 2014. The Rabbit Island Residency program will collaborate with the selected residents over the next 9 months to help refine their proposals, plan outcomes, and prepare them for living and working on the island.
+ Nich Hance McElroy, Vancouver-based photographer who’s work investigates the often incompatible notions of putting down roots (history, settlement, place-making and stewardship) and making a route (migration, entrepreneurship, way-making, and roaming). Proposal excerpt:
While Rabbit Island is a model case of responsible development, land stewardship and progressive thinking, it is also emblematic of the highly networked, globally aware and resource dependent realities of the twenty-first century. It is simultaneously a finite 91-acre island in Lake Superior and the convergence zone for countless modes of commute and communication, whether physical or digital, affective or literal.
What does a migratory population bring to a small and isolated ecosystem? How does the culture of temporary inhabitation brush against deep ecological commitments? To investigate these questions I hope to document the comings and goings of the island, in their human, material, and biotic guises.
+ Elvia Wilk, Berlin-based writer who’s critical and creative writing practices converge at the intersection of art, architecture, and networked technology, exploring the relationships between physical and virtual space. Elvia plans to produce two separate text-based works, a series of poems and an investigative essay. Proposal excerpt:
[I will] focus on questions I have begun investigating thus far in my work, beginning with the politics of isolation within today’s networked society. How has my relationship and understanding of nature been affected through the evolution of the technologies I use? Where is the dividing line between the “natural” environment and the created, virtual one?
Perhaps isolation is impossible today, but how would being surrounded by water on all sides for a chunk of time alter my mentality, my constant need for back-and-forth interaction through a server? Fittingly, water serves as both content and metaphor in much of my writing. I’m interested in juxtaposing its fluidity with the dichotomous, mathematical structure of our networked existences, and the often-rigid physical architecture characteristic of urban space. Does information “flow” through these systems like water? Are concepts so liquid as they appear?
+ Waboozaki group proposal (Dr. Dylan Miner, Dr. Julie Nagam, Dr. Nicholas Brown, and Suzanne Morrissette). A collaborative group who’s research investigates the Indigenous histories of the Great Lakes region, presents cultural remapping studies, and explores experimental – as well as experiential – geography. Proposal excerpt:
By extending the ecologically-based projects developed by [The Rabbit Island project] Waboozaki, these three Indigenous and one non-Native artists, will begin (or rather continue) thinking about the island and Lake Superior in relation to Indigenous notions of placemaking and mapping. … Collectively, the artists will explore notions of place, Indigenous history, the islands location in the US-Canada borderlands, its specific ecology and medicinal herbs, etc. While the artists will collectively address issues related to Native American mapping, they will also develop individual projects around similar themes.
Residency Application Update: We received 115 applications from 12 countries for the 2014 Rabbit Island Residency. Creative and smart proposals and were submitted in genres across the board: visual art, dance, music, writing, photography, mapping, interactive sound, poetry, landscape architecture, and many others. Each proposal has been a pleasure to review and we would like to sincerely thank everyone who applied. We are in the process of narrowing submissions to 3 funded residencies and plan to announce winners publicly on Monday, September 9th.
We are excited to be able to offer a small group of artists the opportunity to contemplate what it means to create on a remote island in Lake Superior. Thanks again, everyone.
Good luck to our friends at Cabin-Time at the start the of their fifth expedition, CT5: Green River. We’re looking forward to see what they’ll be working on in the dusty expanse of Desolation Canyon, Utah, especially our friends and previous Rabbit Island residents: Geoffrey Holstad, Sarah Darnell, Ryan Greaves, Mary Rolithsberger (CT3: Rabbit Island in 2012), Emily Julka (2012 and 2013), and Charlotte X.C. Sullivan (2013).
Miles Mattison, 2012 residency beta-tester arranging a collection of driftwood.
A quick reminder that the application deadline for a 2014 residency is in two days time (August 23rd, 2013). Make sure you have your applications in by midnight of that day if you would like to be considered for one of the supported residency positions next summer. Apply at: www.rabbitisland.org/art
This past Saturday ten high school students, an illustrator and a NOLS instructor returned from a week of isolation on the island–the first ever Rabbit Island School. We are excited to share the experience and ethics of Rabbit Island with the next generation of artists and conservationists. More on this to come, including art, writing and the harrowing tale of the island’s first kidney stone. Stay tuned!