After taking a minute to study a map on his phone, Adam Wold takes off across a frozen and snow-covered Hemlock Lake in Woodruff.
“On my map here, I'm looking for flatter portions of the bank,” said Wold pointing that map on his phone. “Parts like this would mostly be affected by eastern and western exposure, but since this is flatter, it's more focused on northern and southern [exposure].”
When he gets to the point he found on the map, Wold stops to mark the coordinates in notebook and then he starts counting trees.
“I'm going to break it up into a few different sections as we go along. Then I'm just looking at identifying all the trees long bank within the first like 5, 10 feet. And then I'm going to go in later and calculate how biodiverse that ecosystem is,” said Wold.
In the weeks leading up to Wold’s visit to the Northwoods, he created a hypothesis.
“My hypothesis in the beginning was that the southern banks would have a lot more biodiversity. I think that's getting confirmed a little bit. I mean, we'll have to see once I finish all my data,” he said.
Wold has never done a project quite like this. He’s not majoring in a science-related field. Wold is currently studying architecture at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
“That's kind of why I want to focus around light exposure because natural light is something that I look for a lot in my practices,” said Wold.
Wold is one of seven students from MIAD visiting Kemp Natural Resources Station this week.
Professor Maurizio Murru and adjunct professor Paul Engevold believe the skills they’re developing here are critical to their art and career paths.
“[It’s] to learn how to do research, to be critical, to be analytical, and also to become a little bit more independent,” said Murru.
“They start their work, reading papers, doing background information, obtaining knowledge three months before they get here,” continued Engevold. “Then they come up here. Instead of just giving data like they would in any other class, they're collecting it themselves. They're going out there troubleshooting. They're seeing what works. They're fixing issues that come up, finding ways around it, if they can't solve it.”
MIAD has been bringing students the Kemp Station since 2008, always in the winter and occasionally in the summer as well.
“They have to go under the physical rigors of fieldwork in winter in northern Wisconsin. Then, when they're all tired, then they have to do the mental work,” said Engevold.
The professors love pushing the students to get out of their comfort zone.
“We play with them, because we're constantly asking them the question ‘Why? Why do you think this? How does it work getting information?’” said Murru.
The goal of this week is to help the students develop science-related skills that can improve their art and career skills.
But the same can be true of the reverse.
Sophomore Helena Sucero was particularly interested in joining this course. She’s majoring in fine arts with a science minor.
“I feel like my interest is very divided between arts and science. It's kind of separate, but it's also like, science is something I kind of incorporate into a lot of my artwork,” said Sucero. “Scientific illustration is something I'm kind of, maybe pursuing, so art is kind of important in like making science understandable.”
Her research project this week is studying benthic invertebrates and the things that affect their biodiversity, community composition, and abundance.
Part of that work was in the wet lab at Kemp Station as she was studying the water samples she pulled from nearby streams earlier this week under a microscope.
“I'm right now writing down the first 100 things that I see in this brown sludge so that I can figure out kind of the abundance of different things,” said Sucero.
While the connection between science and art may be more obvious in what Sucero is focused on, it’s a bit more subtle for Cyprien Morin, the teacher’s assistant and a senior studying illustration.
“I actually do comic book art and editorial illustrations,” said Morin. “I don't do nature illustration, so it's not exactly related.”
While maybe not as obvious, Morin says this course is no less impactful on his art.
“I feel like as an illustrator, I can only create from my experiences. So even if in the moment I'm not doing comic or editorial work that's related to this, I still now have a better understanding of environment and the world around me and just how things function in the world. That makes all of my work turnout stronger," said Morin.
This is now Morin’s third time on this course, the first as a TA helping the other students.
On Wednesday, he was tagging along with Wold at Hemlock Lake.
Morin wishes there were more opportunities to get artists outside in this capacity. He says there’s so much value for both the artists and scientists.
“Whether you're doing illustration, or fine arts, or photography or architecture, you have to have such a strong understanding of the world,” said Morin. “And on the other side of things, I feel like scientists really benefit from having people who can help them visualize the data that they're collecting.”
The students will be bringing all the data they’ve collected in the Northwoods back to Milwaukee.
There, they’ll turn it into presentations, making what they’ve learned easy to understand by combining both art and science.
“I feel like there doesn't need to be such a harsh line drawn between the two. We all benefit from collaboration with each other, and our disciplines aren't so separated,” said Morin.
You can see short presentations from the students Saturday, January 13 at Kemp Natural Resource Station. It starts at 1:00 p.m.
