Drawing Water: Artists and Scientists Explore Northern Lakes
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Description
The following is a collection of information about the Drawing Water exhibit. Sources are given.
Drawing Water: Artists and Scientists Explore Northern Lakes
(from the http://lter.limnology.wisc.edu/ltearts/exhibition/panel1)
Exploration: To range over a region, discover facts and gain understanding.
One question inspired “Drawing Water:” What happens when six artists and six scientists join in exploring the complexity, beauty and future of northern lakes?
We were determined to combine the insights of artists and scientists to create something extraordinary: to visualize life below the surface, to travel backward and forward through time, to anticipate our future. This exhibit invites viewers to enter a realm where abstract thought, imagination and vision meld with the scientific world.
We encourage you to join our adventure on the lakes. Please register with this website and log in to leave comments. Or find us on facebook!
This exhibition has been made possible by: The University of Wisconsin – Center for Limnology, the Trout Lake Research Station, the National Science Foundation, and the Long Term Ecological Research Program. Special thanks to the artists, the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest, Trout Lake Station staff, and to you, our visitor/explorers, for your interest, ideas, and your love for these lakes.
News:
Read more about the project in the UW News
Watch a Slideshow of select artworks
July 2, 2011. Impressions from the exhibition opening at Presque Isle
July 5, 2011. Press release "CAMPANILE CENTER FOR THE ARTS TO HOST “DRAWING WATER” EXHIBITION"
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(from the Campanile Center)
Artists and scientists collaborate on exhibit focusing on ecological change
In the popular imagination, the thought processes of artists and scientists could hardly be more distinct. And yet a year-long collaboration of lake scientists and artists from Northern Wisconsin has engaged both sides of the “divide” in understanding and communicating the changing ecology in one of the world’s densest groups of lake -- in the northern highlands of Wisconsin.
On Apr. 12, the collaboration unveiled “Drawing Water: Artists and Scientists Explore Northern Lakes” at the Wisconsin Association of Lakes conference in Green Bay. The exhibit contains works by five visual artists and one poet, each accompanied by a concise explanation of the science behind the art.
Art is a method of communication that scientists seldom use, said Emily Stanley, a professor of zoology at University of Wisconsin-Madison and principal investigator of the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research program, funded by the National Science Foundation. The program is housed at the Trout Lake (Wisconsin) Research Station, near Boulder Junction, Wis. “Some people have a visceral reaction against science, but we’re hoping that art can draw people in to the facts at an emotional level.”
Stanley explained that the project is a natural outgrowth of Trout Lake Station’s historic mission -- to document and understand how the lake country has changed since Trout Lake Research Station was established by two UW-Madison scientists in 1924. At that time, loggers had left a forest of tree stumps, and erosion, tree planting, highways and the first summer cottages were bringing another wave of change to the north woods.
“Art can move people in a way other media, other kinds of information cannot,” says Terry Daulton, a painter from Mercer, who helped organize the June, 2010, meeting of lake researchers and artists that started the collaboration. Discussion at the meeting focused on how development, changes in plants, animals and climate have affected the lakes and the landscape. Through visits to Trout Lake and nearby water bodies, the artists became acquainted with the different ways that vegetation, geology and water can give lakes distinct differences in water quality and biology, despite being located within a few miles of each other.
“From the ancient cave artists to pop culture, artists have been thinking about the natural world and change since the beginning,” says Daulton. “Now we’ve had the chance to talk with all these great scientists, and then respond as poets and visual artists to what we’ve learned. All of us live in the north woods, and all of us love nature, but now we’ve had a chance to see it from a totally different perspective.”
“The best teaching is revelation, an epiphany people come to on their own,” says John Bates, a poet from Manitowish [NOTE: Not Manitowish Waters] . “How do we make it so people can have these Aha! moments?”
The exhibit will include: Of Bogs and Benthos, an embroidery by Bonnie Peterson of Houghton, Mich., which uses the traditional techniques of embroidery and stitching to teach basic concepts of freshwater science by incorporating scientific graphs, maps and historic documents. Vanishing Act, a watercolor by Mindy Schnell of Boulder Junction, Wis., shows the expansion of invasive rainbow smelt at the expense of a school of fading, native walleye.
“Scientists often work in a cocoon, and while we take our work seriously, we are always looking to find new ways to communicate,” says Stanley. Referring to lakes near Boulder Junction, she asks, “When people visit Sparkling Lake, do they understand how it was changed by logging, and then by the introduction of an invasive crayfish? When people camp and swim at Crystal Lake, do they understand why its water is so clear -- and how that clarity can be threatened by ecological decline? These are the kind of issues that we hope these north woods artists can communicate.”