Rabbit Island

Rabbit Island is 91 acres of forest and sandstone located in Lake Superior—the largest body of freshwater in the world, four miles east of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. The island is composed of a native ecosystem standing upon solid bedrock and has never before been developed or subdivided. It is a unique wilderness environment home to a variety of flora and fauna including large white pines, red maples, bald eagles, nesting birds, salamanders, and much more. A number of fish including salmon and native lake trout swim in the waters surrounding the island. The weather is palpable and can vary day-to-day, creating beautiful vistas and humbling experiences. A conservation easement assures the ecosystem will remain healthy in perpetuity. The island serves as a platform for contemporary art, science, and conservation.
The Rabbit Island Residency is a platform to investigate, expand, and challenge creative practices in a remote environment. By living and working on Rabbit Island residents engage directly with the landscape and respond to notions of conservation, ecology, sustainability, and resilience. With the idea that the intelligent organization and celebration of wild spaces is the most civilized thing we can value as society, the residency reflects on the continent’s four hundred year history of settlement and division of land. The island, an unsettled and undivided space, enables residents to present commentary on these ideas, creating creative interpretations and solutions to issues of global importance such as climate change and loss of natural habitat and pristine watersheds.

Work shared to the Rabbit Island audience via online exhibition via the Rabbit Island website and Archive, contribution to the Rabbit Island Collection, and the possibility of artist talks or exhibitions with local partnering institutions.

The basic structures are available for residents to use on the island. An "Adirondack" style shelter with kitchen, bed, library, and tool shed; the Sauna Studio with sleeping loft, sauna, and workspace; and Andrew Ranville's "Perch" installation in the trees—a simple open air platform/studio space.

The island is stocked with tools, equipment and a growing library. All resources are made freely available to residents.