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Fall 2023 Newsletter
Exploring the Intersections of Art and Science: A 2024 Traveling Exhibition
by Amber Mrnak
Get ready to explore the inspiring work that occurs when art and science connect. In 2024, a traveling exhibition will highlight the works of many talented interns, artists, and scientists who have been working side by side to blend these two fields.
The upcoming exhibition will feature the works of six art-science interns and their mentors – six professional artists. Participants of the program have spent the last two summers in the field with scientists at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Lac du Flambeau Tribal Natural Resources, and UW-Madison Trout Lake Station where they were immersed in science and the creation of works of art based on their experiences. The exhibit will also feature contributions from artists associated with our ongoing artist in residencies that takes place during the chillier fall and winter seasons.
This exhibit will travel to several locations throughout Wisconsin during 2024 and hopes to inspire audiences with the unique insights that occur when art and science combine. Visitors will be able to tap their inner artist and explore their inner scientist while taking in the many works of art.
You can learn more about the program and everyone involved by visiting drawingwater.weebly.com
For now, enjoy a small sneak peek of the upcoming exhibition and stay tuned for more details!
Summer 2023 TLS Newsletter
Better Late Than Never: Alice Hargrave Finally Arrives For Her 2020 Artist-In-Residency Stay
by Gretchen Gerrish
Thanks to COVID-19 protocols and international travel limitations, artist Alice Hargrave took an unusual route to her TLS artist-in-residence session. In fact, Alice arrived on station well after her limnology-inspired “The Conference of the Lakes” exhibit was already on display!
Alice learned about the long-running art residency program at TLS in the fall of 2019 at the Global Lakes Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) meeting. Already in collaboration with Illinois State University Professor of Geology, Catherine O’Reilly, Alice had developed the idea of tackling an art project to share lake data stories from around the world.
Her interest in a residency was both professional and personal. She has multigenerational connections to the area and its waters and describes the lake-rich Northwoods as her “spiritual home” where she built her “first memories of being in nature.” Alice, her grandmother, and mother grew up attending Camp Osoha, an all-girls summer camp formerly located on nearby Big Muskellunge Lake. She remembers family picnics at Cathedral Point on Trout Lake.
Inspired by both this place and the science, Alice began incorporating 20 global lake stories into her work. The following three Wisconsin lake stories were featured in her exhibit entitled The Conference of the Lakes.
– Mercury concentrations in food chains of lakes tightly follows changes in lake water level. Higher lake levels correlate with more mercury in the fish we love to eat. (Watras et al. 2020)
– Salt concentrations are increasing in the four big lakes around Madison over the last 50 years and road salts are the most likely driver of this change. (Dugan et al. 2017)
– Ice off and ice duration are increasingly variable in Northern Wisconsin lakes and walleye are less successful in extremely early or late ice off years. (Feiner et al. 2022)
In January of 2023, Alice finally arrived at Trout Lake Station for her residency, where she spent two wintry weeks in Halverson Cabin. With her The Conference of the Lakes and Tracing Teal (a data and audio feature of bird calls) exhibits successfully installed and receiving visitors at the University Galleries of Illinois State University, she spent her residency visualizing a new body of work celebrating the “fairy book” look of snow-whitened forests and lakes, reflecting on how these sights are “a luxury we don’t have in Chicago anymore.”
Whatever she comes up with next, we’re just happy we could help Alice continue her work, even if it was three years later than expected!
Fall 2022 Newsletter
Drawing Water: Art and Science Mentorship Program Produces Beautiful Results
This past summer, Trout Lake Station hosted three undergraduate artists for the entire field season as part of a program exploring new ways to share our science with wider audiences. Each student spent time doing fieldwork with a scientist mentor and time in the studio (or outdoors plein air painting) with an artist mentor. Having student artists living and working on station and interacting with other “Trout Lakers” helped students and researchers see the science they interact with daily in new ways and also added a new, vibrant aspect to our community. Below is a sample of each student’s work.

Cameo Boyle
“I want to show our connection with nature through my work. As humans we have the desire to be near nature such as plants and wildlife. We as humans depend on the natural world that supplies our daily needs.”

Libby Hetzel
“Nature has always sought ideals. Ideals that are never perfectly realized, but that exist nonetheless: only as intangible concepts… Concepts that humans understand collectively; concepts that are evident in every methodical step we take to study our surroundings.”

Catherine Nelson
“My work is about connection: bringing people closer to each other and to the natural world around them. Influenced by both science and art, my work in each field is strengthened by skills I’ve learned in the other.”
Summer 2022 TLS Newsletter
2022 brings big changes in the ‘Artist-in-Residence’ program at Trout Lake Station.
Trout Lake Station’s long-running artist-in-residence program will be expanding this year in both its mission and the number of faces on station.
For the first time ever, three college interns will be joining the TLS community to work at the intersections of art and science. Also for the first time ever, each intern will be joined by both an artist mentor and a scientific mentor to improve their craft, engage in scientific discovery, and demonstrate the wonders of the natural world to a larger audience.
This change adds many new people to the TLS community and provides opportunities for everyone on station to interact with the artists and benefit from their perspectives on the research we do.
Discussions with both student and mentor candidates for this position have shown that there is a real need for mentorship to show aspiring artists what is possible when it comes to sharing scientific concepts through their art. Many students have discussed how pivotal this opportunity will be for their personal lives as well as their careers. As the first year begins, we are excited to see new connections form and new opportunities unfold as these two passions for art and science unite and new paths toward careers in art and science unfold.
This partnership also provides opportunities to strengthen collaboration between local agencies with similar missions. Science mentors will come from three local sites: the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Lac du Flambeau Tribal Natural Resources, and UW-Madison Trout Lake Station. The student artists’ limnology experience will grow as they actively participate in research in fisheries, wetlands, and aquatic plants at their respective sites.
Not only are the student interns enthusiastic to get started, but their artist mentors are eager to help them shape their craft. While the artist mentors have been working professionals for many years, they are looking forward to the inspiration that will come from working with someone new and the joint experiences they will have in the field with the scientists.
The interns are looking forward to gaining experience in a community that holds high value in both art and science. Hopefully this opportunity inspires them to become mentors for other young artists. They are looking forward to showing local middle school students how art and science aren’t mutually exclusive and that their lives and careers can feature both.
We hope that you will follow along with us this summer as we plan events and galleries to showcase the art and the science that inspires it.
Long-Term Ecological Reflections

Long-Term Ecological Reflections By Aubrey Vaughn
By 2010, more than 100,000 people in the northern Midwest had viewed the touring science-inspired art exhibit Paradise Lost? Climate Change in the North Woods. It had traveled two years longer than planned, ferried from community to community by a U-Haul and Terry Daulton, the biologist and artist who first proposed the project. It was a success beyond what any of its originators imagined when it was first proposed in 2006.”
Year arts activities began: 2006
Writers and artists hosted: 38 artists, including fiber artists, painters, writers, poets, and sculptors have been an artist-in-residence, with additional artists participating in the first art program, Paradise Lost? Learn more about the artists and view their art.