PELLSTON — Science is art.

Both require a highly trained eye for detail.

And science needs art — public connection, understanding, feeling.

Dr. Callie Chappell at Stanford University fuses those realms of curiosity and creativity together with social and political justice. That personal recipe builds powerful, transformational experiences about our natural world and human history.

“Art and science are one and the same. We’re all just trying to better understand the world and share what we’ve learned,” said Chappell.

The ecologist and professional artist based in San Francisco, California, grew up in Traverse City, Michigan.

Chappell is returning to their home state and alma mater to interact with the robust scientific community in northern Michigan and celebrate the region’s rich cultural and ecological history.

The University of Michigan Biological Station selected Chappell as an artist in residence from July 16-24 at the more than 10,000-acre research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake just south of the Mackinac Bridge in Pellston.

It is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.

“We think by allying with artists and ingraining them in our field station, together we can inspire deeper understanding and appreciation of local ecosystems and improve public engagement to support conservation,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of the U-M Biological Station and a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Callie, who also is a professional scientist, brings a dynamic perspective at a much-needed time in our global history.”

Chappell’s work blends stories of land, ecology and identity through a community-centered art practice.

While at Douglas Lake, Chappell will help the UMBS community make large collective cyanotype tapestries that will be put on permanent display at the field station as well as individual sun prints.

“Cyantotypes are the perfect example of how science and art interact to support each other and tell a story,” Chappell said. “Early botanists used the photographic technique to make exact record of how plants looked. They’re the original ‘blue print.’ And I am taken by the blue color. Growing up in northern Michigan, you’re around a lot of lakes and inundated by blue. And Go Blue!”

Chappell is interested in how communities — both ecological and social — interact. Chappell studied bacteria and yeast that live in the nectar of flowers during their Ph.D. work studying biology at Stanford University.

The U-M alumna conducted research at the U-M Biological Station as an undergraduate student studying the chemical ecology of milkweed as well as aphids and earned their bachelor’s degree in biology in 2016 and master’s degree in molecular, cellular and development biology in 2017.

Chappell is a Biosecurity Innovation and International Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.

As someone who grew up in the rural Midwest, Chappell knows how to fry foraged morel mushrooms in butter and believes the best dessert is maple syrup on fresh snow.

But they know it’s not all beauty and bounty.

“I felt violence on the landscape when I stepped into Hartwick Pines, the only old-growth forest left in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan,” Chappell said. “I felt for those trees, who had lost all their brethren when the entire Lower Peninsula of Michigan was clear-cut in the late 1800s. I had lost brethren too, growing up as a Chinese adoptee in a sea of white faces.

“I felt violence on the land when I heard others struggle to pronounce Peshawbestown and Sault Ste. Marie and Kalamazoo, reckoning with our history of immigration and colonial violence with my present experience. I felt the land when my loved ones were diagnosed with cancer and I learned that groundwater contamination not only in cities like Flint, but even my rural community, could turn tap water undrinkable. “

While at the U-M Biological Station, Chappell will host several hands-on cyanotype workshops outside where students, faculty, researchers and staff will make sun prints — blue, camera-less photographs — that will blend cultural items with local plants to create custom sun prints that represent each individual’s identity.

“These workshops will center conversations about the intersection of culture, identity and colonialism on the community and ecosystem ecology of Michigan,” Chappell said.

Each participant will make their own sun print on a sheet using photo-sensitive paper and two chemicals that react upon exposure to UVA radiation, and then work together as groups to make large collective tapestries that will be put on permanent display at the field station.

Participants put their items on paper and expose it to sunlight for about 10 minutes. They develop the film by washing the paper in the lake.

Chappell’s project at UMBS is in collaboration with Michigan State University’s W.K. Kellogg Biological Station (KBS), where Chappell will be embedded July 24-30.

Register for one of Chappell’s free cyanotype workshops on a sign-up sheet in the stairwell to the dining hall. All are from noon to 2 p.m. at the picnic tables along the lake. They can accommodate up to 30 people per workshop.
 
Tuesday, July 18: Students
Wednesday, July 19: Researchers
Thursday, July 20: Staff and Families

To celebrate the art created together, UMBS will host an art exhibition and reception for Chappell and the cyanotype art created along the lake. The event is from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, July 20, in the dining hall.

Participants will be able to keep their individual sun prints. The large collective tapestries will be put on permanent display in the Lecture Hall.  

The public is invited to Chappell’s free lecture, titled “Science Communication and Art,” from 7 to 8 p.m. Monday, July 17, at the U-M Biological Station, 9133 Biological Rd. in Pellston.

Visit Chappell’s website.