Andrew S Hiebert
Audrey Lute
Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick (Inspired Planet)
Producer Yvonne Drebert and Director/Cinematographer Zach Melnick are a husband-and-wife documentary production team, working under the banner of Inspired Planet Productions, located on the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula. Over the past 20 years, they’ve co-created more than 40 hours of nature, science, and history documentary.
We were thrilled to invite Yvonne and Zach out to the site in August 2022.
In 2014, they began work on the 17×1 hour documentary series, “Striking Balance,” for TVO and the Knowledge Network. The series told many fish stories – from Atlantic salmon in the Bay of Fundy, to the yellow perch of Quebec’s Lac Saint-Pierre, to the gigantic lake trout of Great Bear Lake in the NWT. But the most intriguing story they encountered was unfolding right in their own backyard: in the depths of the Great Lakes trillions of invasive mussels are changing our lakes on a scale unseen since the last ice age.
“These lakes in northern Ontario gave decision makers the tools they needed to create policy to ensure a healthier future for all our lakes and it’s amazing that IISD Experimental Lakes Area continues to fulfill that role to this day.”
Yvonne Drebert
It’s gone largely unnoticed, but over the past 20 years, some 950 trillion invasive quagga mussels have literally sucked the life out of the Great Lakes. They’re trapping the basic building blocks of life, nutrients, on the lake bottom. Without nutrients, organisms of all kinds – from the tiniest plankton to the largest fish have vanished. In Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Ontario, vast offshore areas have become “biological deserts,” heralding one of the biggest changes to the earth’s freshwaters since the last ice age.
It’s nutrients that brought the team to the IISD Experimental Lakes Area. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, critical research was conducted here that helped us understand how nutrients, like phosphorus, affect lake systems.
You’ll be able to discover the whole story in the team’s upcoming documentary, All Too Clear, due out in early 2024.
Take a look below at just some of the work inspired by their time out at yours truly as part of a larger documentary project.
Ben Evans James
Ben is a filmmaker and film curator based between Germany and Canada. We were thrilled to invite him out as our only Artist-in-Residence of the year in September 2021.
His films have premiered at major international festivals including Visions du Réel, Edinburgh International Film Festival and Sheffield Doc Fest and screened at galleries including MoMA New York, Design Museum London and HKW Berlin. He is the film curator at transmediale festival in Berlin and co-founded South Kiosk film space in London.
Made as part of my PhD research, recent film works have engaged with large scale architectural infrastructures that mediate relationships between humans and the earth. In the past this has included nuclear test sites, open-mines, under sea data-cables and the most powerful power line in the world.
It was this interest in large scale infrastructures (and what they might reveal about our precarious relationship with the earth) that drew me to the 58 lakes that make up IISD Experimental Lakes Area.
Ben Evans James
Take a look below at just some of the work inspired by Ben’s time out at yours truly.
Heather Hinam
Heather is a Manitoba-based naturalist, artist, photographer, and educator dedicated to helping people reconnect with nature. She visited IISD-ELA from June 9 to 14, 2019, as an Artist-in-Residence.
Heather’s love of nature not only shaped her art and photography but also inspired her to pursue a Ph.D. in ecology. She helps people reconnect with the world around them using her art, scientific training, and years of experience as an interpreter to create engaging media with her company, Second Nature.
“Art and nature have always been inexorably entwined in my life.”
Heather Hinam
Check out the photos Heather captured during her time at IISD-ELA below. To see more of her work, visit www.heatherhinam.com or follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
aAron Munson
aAron Munson is a Canadian filmmaker, cinematographer and multimedia artist. We were thrilled to welcome him out to the world’s freshwater laboratory in August 2022 as an Artist-in-Residence.
His work has taken him from his personal studio to war zones, high-Arctic weather stations, reindeer nomad camps in Siberia, and the Arabian Desert.
aAron’s projects tackle extreme human experiences, both far from and close to home, utilizing film, video, photography and sound to create explorations relating to mental illness, memory, and the nature of consciousness.
You can learn more about aAron by checking out his website and his Instagram. You can also see more of his work on his Vimeo page.
Todd Stewart
Hailing from Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Todd is a self-taught printmaker and published illustrator. He currently lives in Montreal where he co-manages the Temple, a small silkscreen studio. Todd visited IISD-ELA as an Artist-in-Residence from September 22 to October 4, 2019.
Todd’s screenprints have been exhibited in public and private exhibition spaces across Canada and express his fascination with architecture and landscape. His latest children’s book Quand le vent souffle, published in September 2019, imagines a 90-year-long conversation between two pine trees in the boreal forest.
“I create pieces that consciously allow for open interpretation and multiple perspectives. They reflect a search for meaning in unfamiliar places.”
Todd Stewart
See more of Todd’s sketches from his time at IISD-ELA below and visit toddallanstewart.com to learn more about his work and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Sean Landsman
Sean specializes in underwater and research documentary photography with a focus on freshwater systems and conservation issues. He brought his photography skills to IISD-ELA as an Artist-in-Residence from August 25 to 30, 2019.
Sean credits his post-graduate training as a fisheries ecologist for his interest in photography, which has grown into a tool to communicate the science he and his colleagues produce.
I am especially interested in teaching people about the aquatic world and helping foster greater care and appreciation for life beneath the water’s surface.
Sean Landsman
Check out Sean’s photography from his time at IISD-ELA below and see more of his work at www.seanlandsmanphotography.com. You can also follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
Lesley Nakonechny
Lesley Nakonechny is a Winnipeg-based graphic designer and artist whose art practice focuses on themes of nature, prairie plants, and science. Lesley visited IISD-ELA as an Artist-in-Residence from August 11 to 16, 2019.
Lesley graduated from the Graphic Design program at Red River College in 2004 and currently works full-time designing seed industry magazines. She works with a variety of media such as digital and alternative photography, printmaking, found objects, and video to deal with issues of time, memory, identity, and fragmenting of self.
Lesley spent her time out at IISD-ELA using pinhole cameras, shooting on Super 8 film, and making lumen prints that you can explore in the galleries below. See more of Lesley’s work at www.lesnakodesigns.com and follow her on Instagram.
Matt Foster
Matt is a singer, songwriter, and musician who has toured in 11 different countries over his 15-year career. He visited IISD-ELA from July 21 to 26, 2019, as an Artist-in-Residence.
Matt’s songs have been placed in the BBC series Tin Star and in major motion pictures filmed as far away as Mexico. As a member of the Crooked Brothers, his albums have received international critical acclaim and have been nominated at the Canadian Folk Music Awards and the Western Canadian Music Awards.
During his tenure as Artist-in-Residence, Matt wrote some incredibly catchy tunes. Click the button below to listen!
These songs are a little tip of the hat to the hard work of the folks doing what it takes every day to create and sustain the longest-running data set anywhere across the nation.
Matt Foster
Matt’s debut album is set to come out soon but in the meantime you can listen to “You Deserve a Love Song”, a beautiful tune that started to come together during his time at IISD-ELA.
Explore photos and videos of Matt during his time at IISD-ELA below. You can follow Matt on Instagram and YouTube and follow the Crooked Brothers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.