Rabbit Island Residency

Rabbit Island Residency is a three week residency on a remote and uninhabited island in Lake Superior. I used the island itself as a sketchbook and lab. By exploring the contours of its natural patterns, a series of ethereal photographs and sketches emerged of the things that make up the place - rocks, pine needles, shadows, driftwood, whatever was naturally at hand - in a celebration of what exists, resisting the human tendency to tear down, build up, and conquer.

Because of its isolation, Rabbit Island felt like the center of the natural world than the world from which I had come. All one needed to do there was survive while making one's presence invisible - not an easy task, but a relief from the shouting and distraction of the increasingly uncivilized actions of the civilized world. On Rabbit Island, there was no distraction. I'd brought with me a number of not-yet-put-together paper bird models that had been lying around for a number of years, and in a setting in which I could concentrate on the matter at hand, a project took form: the ability to 'invent' or create nature made clear the hubris of our current interaction with nature, but also the necessity of valuing what was naturally there.

2016

Artist residence on Rabbit Island,

a remote island in Lake Superior, USA

The Rabbit Island Foundation