NMU’s DeVos Museum puts on Rabbit Island exhibit

MARQUETTE — Northern Michigan University’s DeVos Art Museum has begun the fall semester with a show demonstrating the creativity inspired by a U.P. island.

The Rabbit Island exhibit is connected with an artist residency program on the island of the same name.

Rabbit Island itself is 91 acres of forestland sitting upon solid bedrock in Lake Superior, about three miles east of the Keweenaw Peninsula. It has never been developed or subdivided.

The show features the work of six artists and writers who lived there for a short time this summer.

“Their response and their reaction to their time out there, you really can see in the artwork,” DeVos Museum director and curator Melissa Matuscak said. “You’ll get a sense of what they think about the island and what their experience was when you see their work.”

The residency program will continue, and the 2015 application period closed last week. The program intends to keep the island a secluded space for creative and scientific exploration.

“We received a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs,” Matuscak said. “That made a huge difference, because now we can help support the needs of the artists who travel to the island.”

The DeVos Museum is hosting the Rabbit Island exhibit through September 28th. The artists and writers who stayed on the island this year, and the two co-founders of the residency program, will all visit the museum that day to close the show.