PELLSTON, Mich. — Since 2018, the University of Michigan Biological Station has welcomed artists of all mediums to explore their work through live-in residencies at the more than 10,000-acre research and teaching campus in northern Michigan.
From podcasts and poetry to painting and photography, delve into a handful of examples of recent work by artists inspired by their time embedded at the remote field station’s forested landscape surrounded by lakes.
Painting
Leslie Sobel, a painter and printmaker from Ann Arbor, spent one month in spring 2023 based in a cabin along Douglas Lake and embedded within the scientific community.
Sobel uses her mixed-media work to focus on climate change, water and the public’s disconnect from the natural world.
One of her favorite pieces she created, so far, inspired by her time at the field research station in Pellston is titled “Cedar Trees at Narnia - above and below” (pastel on Rives BFK, 32" x 42", ©2024). (View the photo at the top of this story.)
“Faculty member Becky MacKay invited me along on a hike with her students to the Narnia trail in the UP — officially the Woolam Family Preserve,” Sobel said. “It was their final exam, but I was just along to enjoy the spectacular cedar and limestone boulder terrain. You couldn't actually see underground to visualize the mycorrhizal network but after learning about them I had to draw them as I imagined.”
In her studio in Ann Arbor, Sobel continues to build her body of work from her UMBS artist residency.
“The future work is going to be somewhat dimensional, and some will be quite large — 40 x 60"-ish,” Sobel said. “The art will be focused on ecosystems, mycorrhizal networks, keystone and invasive species and how they intersect.”
Photography
The 192-page photobook created by Aaron Ellison and Eric Zeigler, artists in residence during summer 2022, is titled “instability”.
Zeigler is an associate professor of art at The University of Toledo, and Ellison is a retired ecologist at Harvard University who spent 20 years at Harvard Forest.
Their book includes a photo matrix of the Burn Plots, historic research at UMBS. Composed of sections of forest burned in 2017, 1998, 1980, 1936, 1923 and 1901, the photo matrix spotlights the more than 100-year series of ecological sites subjected to logging and fires.
The Burn Plots serve as a time machine that allows scientists to look back at forests of different ages and study disturbance, succession and forest ecology.
“We were excited to work at UMBS because of the interesting visual opportunity the burn plots provided, but also because there is a deep history of records, student work on the plots, and rich data that support the photographs we made,” Zeigler said. “This richness is shown in the storyboard site that was created after we were there.”
The photobook “instability” is available for purchase on Zeigler’s website.
(Read the Burn Plot Story Map that Zeigler referenced to learn more about the research.)
Podcast
Kyle Norris, a Michigan native who lives in Bellingham, Washington, used his NPR skills honed over a 20-year career in public radio to make a 30-minute audio profile of the Biological Station.
For several weeks in August of 2023 as artist in residence at UMBS, Norris immersed himself in nature, used his microphone to record sounds of the forest and the lake, and conducted interviews with researchers and students.
Norris wrote a summary of his sound-rich work: “In this podcast, we'll canoe down the Maple River; catch and study fish with university students; pop into a cabin from 1915 (also known as a ‘tin bin’); appreciate the kitchen's impressive salad bar; and relax in the biostation's lush summer garden. And we'll hear from students, professors and staff to find out what makes this place so very special.”
Listen to his UMBS podcast episode on his website.
Poetry
Madeleine Wattenberg was the most recent artist in residence at UMBS.
The award-winning poet and assistant professor of writing at Lakeland University in Wisconsin lived at the University of Michigan Biological Station in summer 2024 from June 23 to Aug. 2.
While immersed in the robust science community and habitats throughout northern Michigan, Wattenberg worked on her book manuscript, wrote new poems, revised her work, and engaged everyone on campus to curate a collaborative poem titled “From Beginning to End Takes Us Back Again” that celebrates and shares life at UMBS.
“Writing collaborative poems decenters the individual and emphasizes interwoven experiences,” Wattenberg said. “The poem belongs to no one person or perspective; in the same way, we share responsibility to our surrounding ecosystems as we collaborate with human and nonhuman life to make our homes.”
Read the poem written at the University of Michigan Biological Station with artist-in-residence Madeleine Wattenberg in summer 2024:
From Beginning to End Takes Us Back Again
Let’s start with the red-backed salamander taking a lungless breath under the fallen pine.
Let’s start with the bobbing buoy as it reaches into the kettled temperatures of Douglas Lake.
Let’s start with the youngest buds atop the grandmother trees
and the joyful giggles and wonderous awe of the next generation of naturalists, scientists, splashing in the water, kicking up the sand!
Let’s start with that tiding, tugging breath that hitches before a laugh, that echoes in strings of summertime, sweet summertime.
Let’s start with Lou and August biking to Aimee’s house for sandwiches (again)
and the gnats that dance as speckled light in the path of the sun.
Let’s start with the friendly chipmunks and bumblebees,
with Pistachio’s narrow escape from the big garter snake.
Let’s start with a plastic cafeteria cup filled with crunchy applejacks eaten in the chatterbox.
Let’s start with the stolen pen residing on the volleyball court.
Let’s start with the ink in the archives, bird-footed scratches marching through the decades, tree growths and snow melts, big stories told through small numbers.
Let’s start with late night swims and star gazing.
Let’s start with mud-puddle plaster preserving the raccoons’ handprints
and the library sign that reminds us to keep the door closed.
Let’s start with the dragonflies’ split shells that cling to the grasses and cabin sides long after what they carried have taken to wing.
Let’s start with fishing off the tethered pontoons and translucent lines like corn silk catching light.
Let’s start with the black-blotted bracken fern—who spilled their ink across these persistent leaves?
Let’s start with the aspen trees, the rivers that whisper inside them
as their leaves turn like tossed coins or applause in summer winds.
Let’s start with the fire that cracks open new growth and the warmth creeping farther north. What new species will appear here?
Let’s start in the rain garden, the vegetable garden, the wildflowers surrounding the boathouse, as we offer thanks to their pollinators.
Let’s start with a lone canoe framed by sunset as it drifts and drifts. Nothing here is motionless.
Let’s start with hand-painted kerchiefs left behind to dry like so many flags declaring peace,
the drum of the hydroplane just returned from a piping plover rescue.
Let’s start with an archive inscribed into cabin walls, new over old, a mouse nest built in an unlit stove.
Let’s start with the trickle of conversation carried down from the cafeteria to the courts, the cabins, the shoreline, into a lake of equal parts care and curiosity.
Let’s start with reindeer lichen’s calligraphy across the forest floor
and bright interruptions from goblet waxcaps and stalked scarlet cups.
Let’s start with measurements, the lifting of leaves to count strawberries, on hands and knees through the roots of trees.
Let’s start with repetition, we awaken, we sleep, as stars spin over wild blueberries, anthills, and rooves of red pines.
Let’s start with the sound of tires on gravel as we watch new friends leave the station to press play and continue their journeys.
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With contributions from Maddy, Gage, Isabel, Lauren, Eva, Isabella, and many other anonymous scientist-poets
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The U-M Biological Station — the largest of U-M’s campuses —is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
Laboratories, classrooms and cabins are tucked into more than 10,000 acres along Douglas Lake to support long-term science research and education.
Founded in 1909, the Biological Station is located about 20 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge and is about a three-and-a-half-hour drive north from Ann Arbor.
Artists: The 2025 deadline to submit applications for the spring and summer Artist-in-Residence program at the University of Michigan Biological Station is Feb. 1. Visit the Artist in Residence program website for details.
Students: Explore 2025 field-based courses and scholarships at the U-M Biological Station and apply for the four-week spring and summer terms on the UMBS Courses website. Applications are open for the spring term, which is from May 20 through June 19, and the summer 2025 term, which is from July 1 through July 31. The priority application deadline is March 15, 2025. Student research fellowships are also available. See the UMBS Student Research Opportunities website for details.
Researchers: Submit new research proposals or renewals and fellowship applications on the UMBS Research Application website. The deadline for research and fellowships during the 2025 field season is Feb. 1, 2025.
