Rabbit Island 2014 Residency Exhibition
August 18 - September 28, 2014

Devos Art Museum
Marquette, Michigan

This exhibition is supported in part by an award from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts. Support also provided by the NMU Department of English, NMU Center for Native American Studies, the NMU UNITED Conference, the Canada Arts Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Rabbit Island Foundation.

nmu.edu/devos

A few days ago the last of our 2014 residents departed from the island. They are now back on the mainland preparing their works and research for this years catalogue and exhibition at the DeVos Art Museum. 3 applications (6 artists in total) were awarded a generous honoraria to travel to Rabbit Island; to reflect on and challenge their practice in a remote forested wilderness surrounded by the largest body of freshwater on earth. Sound like something you would be interested in?

One month remains until the August 22nd deadline for 2015 summer residency applications. Visit the Art section to find out how you can live and work on the island next year, and learn more about the publication and exhibition that the DeVos awards each resident.

We are looking forward to your proposal.

Top. Elvia Wilk (Berlin, Germany). Berlin-based American writer and artist Elvia Wilk arrived on Rabbit Island on June 7th as the season’s first artist in residence. She had prepared to spend over two weeks living alone in the island’s three-sided shelter exploring themes of isolation, connection, and the relationship between physical and virtual space through text-based works including essays and poems. After 7 days, however, high winds, low temperatures and intermittent rain left her no choice but to abandon early to the mainland. This was an unexpected hand dealt by Mother Nature, but such is life on Lake Superior. Regardless, we’re looking forward to an exhibition of her work at the 2014 residency show opening on August 18th at the DeVos Art Museum, alongside the works of the summer’s five other residents.

Middle. Nich Hance McElroy (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada): Nich arrived on Rabbit Island on June 21st and has been residing there since, with the exception of two days on the mainland to resupply. He intends to depart sometime before July 20th to face the significant task of developing and curating images from the many sheets of film he has taken in residence. His first two weeks were experienced completely solo with the exception of one visit from a local fisherman bearing a coho salmon and six pack of beer. The latter portion of his stay, beginning on the 9th of July, overlaps with the artists from the collaborative group, Waboozaki (below). Nich’s residency application proposed the documentation of movements and migrations of people, nature and objects on and between the mainland and island. This photo shows him touching base on a calm day just before making the four mile crossing back to the island in a twelve foot aluminum boat loaded with large format camera equipment. 

Bottom. The collaborative group, Waboozaki: Dr. Dylan Miner (East Lansing, Michigan), Dr. Julie Nagam (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Dr. Nicholas Brown (Iowa City, Iowa), and Suzanne Morrissette (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). This group of four artists and faculty members from universities in Ontario, Michigan and Iowa, arrived on Rabbit Island on July 9th and will be in residence until July 16th pursuing various projects related to their individual fields of study and shared indigenous heritage. 

Nagam’s research interests, for example, include a (re)mapping of the colonial state through creative interventions within concepts of native space. Her areas of interest are cultural geography (urban, rural and remote space), Indigenous critical theory, cultural and performance theory and Indigenous digital and new media. Her creative practices include working in mixed media, such as drawing, photography, painting, sound, projections, and new and digital media. 

Miner is an artist, activist, historian and curator. Currently he is an Associate Professor at Michigan State University, where he coordinates a new Indigenous Contemporary Art Initiative and is adjunct curator of Indigenous Art at the MSU Museum. He is pursuing two ideas. The first is described as ‘Michif-Michin’ (The People, The Medicine) which deals with traditional medicines and knowledge of the natural world. The second is 'The Silence of Sovereignty’, dealing with Indigenous political issues. 

Morrissette is an artist and writer from Winnipeg Manitoba, who is currently based out of Toronto, Ontario where she studies in a PhD program at York University. She has been exploring Rabbit Island and gathering audio using custom underwater contact microphones designed and built with a collaborator specifically for the residency.

Brown has become interested in the historic L'Anse to Lac Vieux Desert Trail (http://www.lvdtribal.com/trail.html), which was used for centuries (until the 1940s) by the Anishinaabe. His investigations may result in some extended backpacking and kayaking across the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, literally connecting the island to the historic trail.

Additional research that the collaborative has been compiling, including historical maps of the Rabbit Island region, can be found here: http://ni-aazhawaam-minis.tumblr.com

Information about the Rabbit Island 2014 Residency Exhibition at the DeVos Art Musuem, August 15th - September 28th, 2014.

Science: Baseline Comparison of Island and Mainland Algae

In the summer of 2013 research of algae began on Rabbit Island led by Professor of Microbiology, Tim Gsell, PhD, of Governors State University. Recently his team of graduate and undergraduate students reported initial results which are posted below for review. 

Background: The goal of this study is to quantify baseline microbial populations from island and mainland sites to create a foundation for future comparison. Dr. Gsell’s team hypothesized that annual data analysis will allow for identification of changes in microbial populations which will subsequently allow researchers to draw conclusions about Lake Superior water quality, nutrient loading, temperature changes, sources of pollution, fish habitat, and various other interwoven natural relationships. 

Microbial characteristics of large bodies of water, and particularly the negative consequences of imbalances of nutrient loading and pollution, frequently become headlines. Lake Erie, for example, the fourth of five lakes in the Great Lakes drainage, suffers annually from runoff from upstream farmland and fertilizer. Similarly, in Lake Superior in 2012, a small algal bloom off the coast of Wisconsin was believed to be the first documented bloom in the lake’s 10,000 year history. 

The subtext of this study of algae on Rabbit Island does not overlook such facts, of course, and is rooted in a belief that objective monitoring is required to quantify change over time and relate complex variables systematically. Further, Rabbit Island–situated remotely, undeveloped, uncut, and within the largest, cleanest body of fresh water in the world–serves as an ideal laboratory to measure changes of watershed scale that are manifested microscopically. 

Perhaps most important, however, is the idea that creating art on Rabbit Island, and everywhere else, requires consideration of the externalities of one’s creation relative to larger systems of organization. After all, the larger the scale of consideration of one’s creative force, the more classic the resulting actions have the potential to be. 

Here are the initial results. The following is a list of what was detected in the algal blooms around the island in comparison to the shoreline during July of 2013.

+ Mainland Samples: Obtained from two points in Lake Superior near the boat landing at Big Traverse Bay, roughly eight miles north of Rabbit Island. These samples had the following cyanobacterial/algae makeup:

Sample 1: Sphaerocystis, Oocystis, Synedra, Fragillaria, Nitschia, Oscillatoria.

Sample 2: Euglena, Ulothrix, Coelastrum, Chlorella, Actinastrum, Diatoms, Synedra, Fragillaria, Asterionella.

+ Rabbit Island Shoreline Samples: Obtained near the island landing and near the northernmost point. These samples had the following cyanobacterial/algae makeup:

Sample 1: Mainly Ulothrix with additional presence of Zygnema, Chlorcocum, Nitschia, Cyclotella, Navicula, Stauroneis, Spirochaetes.

Sample 2:  Mainly UIothrix, with additional presence of Ankistrodesmus, Pamella, Microspora, Actinastrum.

Discussion of Findings: Professer Gsell notes that his team found many crossover organisms found between the sites, which would be expected. However, some differences were seen in this rough first analysis, which will be interesting to chart over time and relate to other measured variables such as water temperatures, water clarity, other measurements of pollution, etc 

Some potentially confounding methods must also be controlled for in the future in accordance with scientific principle. For instance, it was not easy to discern if the density of algal blooms varied due to the different depths where samples were obtained. A more comprehensive study using quantitative methods, weekly summer samplings and standardized lab procedures is being designed based on these initial findings. 

Photographs: Top: Algae adhering to shoreline rocks on the northwest shoulder of Rabbit Island, 2012. Second: A non-fluorescent image of a filamentous green algae under light microscopy. Third: Fluorescence microscopy using DAPI stain on a biofilm sample exhibiting diatoms. Fourth: Under Ultraviolet light Chlorophyll A containing microbes shine bright red without staining due to their native properties.

Microscopic photo credit: Professor Timothy Gsell, PhD. 

More can be learned about our open access program for scientists here. 

At the end of May we went to the island to unpack camp for the season in preparation for this summer’s artists, the first of whom arrived on June 7th. We put the boat in at the public launch at Big Traverse Bay, about 8 miles north of the island. The air was around 65 degrees and the water was cold–about 36 degrees. Having never been on the lake under such conditions we were cautious and wore wetsuits, booties, life jackets, gloves and heavy shells. About a mile east of the harbor, as we were rounding Louis Point, we saw a thin white line stretching across the horizon. Veering east we ran the boat closer and were amazed and delighted to find a field of icebergs stretching for more than a half mile. Some were larger than trucks and extended deep into the water, turning light green and then medium blue as you peered down through the clear lake. Some were the size of barrels. Others could be lifted by hand. “Do you want to get on one?” “Yeah.” So we did–and took an abundance of pictures in our excitement. The small ripples on the lake lapped against each berg making a unique sound from all around. It was likely a once in a lifetime experience. At least on May 27th.

For the next three days as we did chores around camp we watched various sized bergs flow back and fourth. Some days they would blow north, other days south. The large ones would worry us a bit as they gradually approached the boat attached to the mooring, as they were many times the mass of the boat. Luckily, as we learned, each time they got within a few stone’s throws of collision their undersides would hang up on the bottom in water much deeper than our anchorage. The tip of the iceberg adage came to mind, and we were thankful to benefit from this fact, especially in the middle of the night as we slept. 

The consistency of the surface of each berg was composed of long geometric crystals, about 4 inches by ½ inch, which were loosely associated above the waterline, close to the berg’s surface. If you picked up a handful they would clink like glass rods and if you stepped on them your feet wound sink in to the ankles. They were very different from regular snow. Deeper in the more central berg the ice was compressed, like that of an ice rink, and iridescent. Occasionally a berg in the distance would calve and then turn over sideways. The sound would carry for hundreds of yards and through the trees to the campfire, or the deck of the shelter. 

Around camp we cleaned up and removed many items that had been brought out without clear purpose over the past year or two. We dried out a few books which had gotten wet, presumably by snow that had blown into the shelter over the winter, and then melted in the spring. We ate smoked trout, fresh fruit until it ran out, fiddlehead ferns which we foraged, pasta, rice, eggs and various dried beans. We listened to the birds and noted the buds of the trees, which were just coming out, several weeks after their counterparts on the mainland. The heartier of the two of us went for a swim, albeit brief. We accidentally caught a small bat that was sleeping in a bin of screws at the work site. We enjoyed one beer a day each–a total of 6–which we had in the evenings after working, and after chilling them in the lake. We didn’t catch any fish, unfortunately, though we only trolled for a few hours on one afternoon. It was a surreal experience on Lake Superior. 

Rob Gorski and Emilie Lee

+ Additional photos on Flickr 

On Saturday, June 7th, 2014, Elvia Wilk, Rabbit Island’s first fully supported Artist-in-Residence, landed and unpacked her bags in the small shelter on the island’s western shore. The lake was calm and the water was 36 degrees. There was a light drizzle. The sky was overcast. We ran the boat south from Big Traverse Bay over approximately eight miles of open water due to winter ice damage at the Hannula’s harbor piers in Rabbit Bay, our usual launch. Small waves lapped the sandstone shoreline adjacent to the island’s mooring. Legs and feet numbed quickly while ferrying supplies from the boat to land in thigh-deep water just days after the last of the lake ice melted.

Elvia is an American artist who travelled from Berlin, Germany, to spend three weeks on Rabbit Island immersed in solitude. She brought clothing suited to variable spring weather in the midst of Lake Superior, food, camp fuel, a number of books on subjects ranging from science fiction to a sociologist’s view of the art world, and a manual typewriter. 

Her first several days on the island were windless and calm and temperatures ranged from the upper 50’s to mid 60’s. She settled in and learned the nuances of the island—how to run the small aluminum boat that was left for her, how to troubleshoot the camp stove, etc. Lake Superior’s surface was glassy for a rare extended stretch. Abundant salamanders were found in the forest—a new discovery.

Yesterday, however, the weather changed and the lake showed a more turbulent side. Winds to 35 knots pushed through the island’s trees, shaking them audibly. Waves crashed against the rocks. Intermittent rain fell and overnight temperatures dropped to 41 degrees. It is indeed compelling to consider the emotions one feels alone and exposed, sheltered in only basic terms. Elvia is currently in the midst of an uncommon period of time away from it all.

On June 21st, our second Artist-in-Residence, Nich Hance McElroy, will be arriving. He and Elvia will work alongside one another for several days. Then, later in July, four artists composing the collective Waboozaki will take up residence on Rabbit Island. 

Saturday was a big day for us and we’d like to document it for the sake of posterity. The Rabbit Island community has come a long way since its inception in 2010. Many incredible artists, musicians, chefs, writers, photographers, scientists and friends have shared this island and left no trace, yet this year we are proud and excited to fully support these 6 residents with $2,250 individual stipends, a group show at the DeVos Art Museum opening on August 18th, a catalogue publication, and, most of all, a wild and remote space to explore their creativity on. We are hopeful that meaningful ideas will be added to our culture by these artists and that many more acres of land will be set aside as society recognizes the need to organize itself reasonably. 

The amount of ice still present in Lake Superior between the mainland and Rabbit Island. Photo by Rob Gorski, May 25th, 2014.

An unusual sight to say the least.

Temperatures for the Keweenaw mainland have been in the 70s for the last couple weeks–and even broken 80 on several days–but the remarkably long and hard winter still bears evidence in Lake Superior. It is an interesting contrast considering the record high temperatures the lake recorded just two years ago. Climate change may be making these swings more dramatic and unpredictable, and as a result will have an effect on Rabbit Island’s ecosystem and surrounding habitat that we are excited–albeit anxious–to study.

Rob and Emilie Lee, an artist who worked on the island last summer, arrived on the island a few days ago to begin setting up camp for the summer residency season. Boating from the mainland this year was a noticeably more challenging endeavor for two reasons; The ice floating between the island and the launch, and our original harbor at Rabbit Bay rendered temporarily unusable, having been badly damaged by shifting shore ice one month ago.

Andrew Ranville arrives in a few days to continue preparing camp and welcome the first resident, Elvia Wilk, a writer and poet from Berlin who lands June 6/7th. If the ice has not melted by then she will enjoy an unique sight at the start her “summer” residency on Rabbit Island.

תודה לך תל אביב (Thank you, Tel Aviv)

This piece about Rabbit Island was published today in Time Out Tel Aviv. A translation is available via Google Chrome. 

Many thanks to journalist Yuval Avivi for sharing.