Rabbit Island - Page 18 - The story of a remote island in Lake Superior

We are gearing up for a busy summer on the island! Here is the Rabbit Island summer update blitz.

In Residence

Andrew Ranville, who recently finished climbing the seven tallest mountains of Morocco’s Western High Atlas, returns to the island for nearly two months this summer. He will be working towards his solo exhibition at the DeVos Art Museum, Northern Michigan University. No Island Is A Man, opening on the 14th of September, will be the first annual museum show devoted to artists-in-residence on the island.

We are planning to further expand exhibitions in the fall/winter as well. More on this as things unfold but project ideas have been bounced around for NYC, London, and, if we’re lucky, Berlin.

Several other artists, musicians and collaborators will be visiting the island this summer. Along with Andrew these folks will be helping “beta test” the residency program, helping inform decisions about logistics, equipping the facilities, and how we run the residency program in general. They are—

Jeremy Quentin of indie/folk project Small Houses spent five days in solitude on the island in late June wrapping up his forthcoming album. He tweaked it while camped out in the island shelter and on his last day sang through each track and called it done. He also endured a character building thunderstorm that brought the heavist 2 day rainfall ever recorded in nearby Duluth, MN, along with 45mph winds. (Eat your heart out Bon Iver).

Sara Maynard, who ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to enable her residency, will combine her visit with some long-distance swimming training–-a true arts + athletics residency. Joining us for a week later in July, we hope she’ll be the first artist to swim to the island!

Will Holman of Chicago, one of the finalists of our architecture competition will be working on various architecture projects to help improve and expand our facilities for future resident artists.

Jono Sturt and Thomas Affeldt of Detroit were also finalists in our architecture competition and will be working on a limited portion of their submission and getting a feel for the lay of the land.

Miles Mattison, an artist from California, will be leading the island sign-making efforts on the island in mid/late August.

Cabin-Time, a Michigan-based nomadic artist residency program started by Geoffrey Holstad will be coming to the island for a few days at the end of August. Six artist in total will working together on a collaborative project.

Steven Michael Holmes is the creator of Mostly Midwest, a music blog championing the Michigan music scene. Check out a video from last year recorded on the island. Steven will be bringing a few more musicians out this summer.

Architect partners Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis will be coming for a few days to design and construct a community table for the island.

The table will be used for a wild foods dinner we are planning at the end of July. Kelly Geary, a Brooklyn-based chef, and some of her chef friends from the Underground Food Collective in Madison, Wisconsin will be preparing this using locally sourced produce, fish, berries and other provisions from the island and nearby farms.

In a similar vein chef TJ Girard of New York and several supporters of our project from around the country have submitted recipes for our island cookbook. (“Julia Goes Camping: Trout Meuniere” is a fun one). We will be experimenting with these on the island and are still accepting recipe submissions.

Marlin Ledin of Small Boat Voyager will be sailing from Wisconsin waters to meet up with us in early August. Since spring he has been solo on a sailboat across the Canadian northshore documenting the lake and it’s surroundings through music, field recordings, and writing.

The folks at Kill Devil Hill in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, have been comissioned to stitch together a Rabbit Island flag which is currently in progress. When finished it will look similar to this.

With their feedback and support we will be ready to officially establish the residency program this Autumn/Winter, opening it to artists and researchers worldwide.

Support

This year we’ve received some wonderful product donations from several small, independent companies who have a spirit similar to the Rabbit Island project. We’ll be sure to let you know a little bit more about them as we land on the island and organize main camp.

A year on and we are still getting regular emails from people all over the world, interested in supporting the project in one way or another. Some people want to donate further funds, old camp equipment, books and more. Some send simple notes of encouragement. All have been gratefully received. If you are interesting in supporting the project personally do get in touch! support@rabbit-island.org

Have some old books that would find a good home in the Rabbit Island library? We’d be happy to receive them. Check out this blog post for more on book donations.

Have some old tools or camping or kitchen equipment laying about? Check out this post for our “reverse garage sale” wants and needs.

We are looking forward to a great summer on the island, and we’ll make sure to send some updates now and again. We’ll even post some images and videos when we have internet access on our few mainland visits.

July 7, 2012

July 2, 2012

Rabbit Island Reverse Garage Sale: Starts Today!

Rabbit Island is in need of a few supplies. In the spirit of our project we are hoping to source some of these items second-hand before falling back on retail outlets. (Similar to this idea, perhaps.)

It works like this: If you have any of these supplies in your garage/attic/basement and are willing to part with them for a fair price please get in touch and we will happily purchase them. All items will be used to keep island artists safe and outfitted with basic, functional tools and help encourage an ethic of rational conservation.

Our first resident artist of 2012, Jeremy Quentin, landed on the island this week and is in the midst of several days of solitude (and a character building thunderstorm) while finishing up a new album. Andrew Ranville will be arriving on July 5th from London in preparation for his Rabbit Island show at the DeVos Art Museum in September. Sara Maynard arrives from San Francisco on July 20th.

contact: rob@rabbit-island.org

note: list will be updated to reflect remaining needs

+ one sturdy wheelbarrow, metal

+ one set wooden oars

+ pulleys - various sizes (sailing blocks, generic pulleys, etc.)

+ two thick wool blankets

+ old sailboat sails for shelter projects

+ kayaking-style life jackets

+ two small dry-bags for emergency boat kits

+ candles - various

+ ropes and lines - of various caliber (for dockage, mooring, general, etc.)

+ stainless mixing bowls - small, medium, large

+ binoculars

+ carpentry nails and screws

+ medium expedition duffle bags

+ sturdy canvas bags for transport of veggies/grains/pasta

+ standard garden tools

+ brass, iron or aluminum bell, 7" - 10" diameter

+ tired climbing gear: ropes, carabiners, cams (to be used for dockage, not climbing)

+ two regular garden spades

+ reliable ladder

+ two handheld compasses

+ two 8 - 15lb anchors

+ 300 feet of anchor line

+ swimming fins, masks

+ 3/2 or 2/1 wetsuits, full or shorty styles

+ used kayak: 14-16’ with 21-23" beam, touring type, molded

+ used laser sailboat

Besides the sale price we’ll take care of shipping. Supplies can be sent to the address below or we can arrange local pick-up in the Upper Peninsula (or NYC):

Rabbit Island

138 S. Iroquois Street,

Laurium, MI 49913

June 21, 2012

Left: A jar of thimbleberry jam made by our neighbor Scott Hannula across the lake in Rabbit Bay. The berries were picked by Scott’s nephew, Craig, in the woods behind his camp somewhere between Rabbit Bay and Dreamland. (We think–he wouldn’t tell!). The jam itself was prepared in about twenty minutes using a pot of boiling water to sterilize the jar and a slurry of berries and sugar which was heated, poured, and then capped. The results are simple and tasty.

Right: A jar of concord grape jam made by chef Kelly Geary of Sweet Deliverance in Brooklyn. Similar direction. Also simple and tasty. But this jar, notably, is award winning.

And not from her grandmother.

In 2012 Kelly’s jam received a Good Food Award from a panel of judges including Alice Waters and Ruth Reichl on the merits of it being “tasty”, “authentic” and “responsible”. The awards program attempted to be "realistic and inclusive of food and drink producers who have demonstrated a commitment to be part of building a tasty, authentic and responsible food system, going far above and beyond the status quo […] rooted in a belief that by being inclusive, our American food system will more closely embody the principles of tasty, authentic and responsible more quickly.“

We mention this because it is, well, pretty cool, but also because of the growing trend of thoughtful awards being handed out across various artisanal disciplines which add to our culture while exhibiting restraint and/or simplicity. Recognizing classical solutions for life’s basic needs and attempting to place them within the context of the present will always be an important part of addressing larger social and environmental problems. Especially amidst the risk of cultural amnesia, superfluous mechanization, inefficient energy use, ecosystem subdivision, etc. Maintaining a traditional relationship to natural resources that is tactile, visual and olfactory yields products of lasting value, or minimal externality.

The lesson of the two jars of jam is then, perhaps, that simplicity is difficult to improve upon and restraint is worthy of reward, especially in the context of the distraction offered by the modern marketplace. Such an idea is not lamentably hip, as some critics have implied (regarding similarly themed subjects), but rather is an idea with roots in the acknowledgement that more is not always better and that systems should indeed change to facilitate such principles. In the woods and in the city jam is the same. And Scott’s thimbleberry jam is certainly "tasty”, “authentic” and “responsible”. But in the urban context jam-making is different and may well be considered an effort to conscientiously hold back, or evidence of a moral decision, or restraint, which is indeed something to celebrate. The art is in the refusal. Morality catches up with science. Subsistence is put in a new cultural context. (It can be such in the woods as well, of course, and anywhere in between).

This larger idea fits well with the ethic of the island: live as well as one can with as little impact on the sustainable function of the system. From this perspective jam is valid and representative.

One of these days, perhaps, we’ll find the time to make our own Rabbit Island Awards to honor ideas and individuals we find notable from the island perspective. You know, like Nobel Prizes. They might just show up in the mail unannounced. (Sans the million dollars.) Who knows.

Yesterday we sat down with Kelly for a cup of coffee in Brooklyn and discussed a number of island and food-related ideas. She hooked us up with the jar of jam above and a few others. Recently she came across our call for help with island food and got in touch. Plenty was bounced around and we’re happy to say that she’ll be collaborating with us this summer–helping curate our kitchen, experimenting with methods of cooking on the island (fire, coleman stove, fish smoker, stone oven), working on some of her own projects, and helping organize a special “Wild Foods Dinner” in late July or early August (more on this to come!). The whole undertaking will be a bit on-the-fly but we’re super excited to see what evolves.

Kelly will also be enlisting the help of friends at the Underground Food Collective in Madison, Wisconsin, who are in the process of opening a new restaurant, Forequarter. Some potential collaborations already being tossed around include an interactive map of the island as well as a few videos similar in nature to the ones posted on their website. They’re very well done, have a look.

Lastly, in an interesting twist of the jam community, our good buddy Noah’s family business, American Spoon Foods, of Petoskey, Michigan, also recieved a Good Food Award in 2012. And get this… for thimbleberry jam from the Upper Peninsula! It makes sense, of course, that Noah shares a connection with us from Michigan and also that Kelly discovered us online and touched base in New York, but the fact that both had winning jams in the same category of the same competition in the same year is a bit unbelievable. They never met, though curiously they had tried each other’s jam! Not being superstitious we’re unsure what to make of this but we won’t be underestimating the the importance of luck (and internet) anytime soon.

We’re excited to host Kelly et al. on the island this summer and receive advice from Noah from a few hours downstate (where he’ll be getting to know a newborn baby boy), and are excited to push the Rabbit Island food culture forward. Culture, after all, is what it is all about.