Wisconsin Sea Grant videographer Bonnie Willison recently joined Geo Rutherford, artist and educator, for beachcombing at Milwaukee’s Bradford Beach on Lake Michigan. While Rutherford searched for washed-up items that could offer clues to what’s going on in the obscure depths of the Great Lakes, Willison captured shots that are now part of a just-released video in Sea Grant’s Voices of the Coast series.
“My work explores concepts of the unseen in the Great Lakes,” says Rutherford . Geo has visited hundreds of Great Lakes beaches in order to collect objects, which she displays in delicate glass tube installations or artist books. From toothbrushes to barrettes, concrete to crinoid fossils, Rutherford collects items that, together, give a “full picture of the beach.”
Rutherford also creates prints and collages teeming with aquatic invasive species. “The multiplicity of printmaking feeds so well into the story of invasive species,” she says. She uses this medium to tell stories about sea lamprey, alewives and mussels while documenting the process in her videos.
In June 2020, Rutherford started using the popular social media app TikTok to create and share short videos about her Great Lakes art. She almost instantly found an audience that was hungry for Great Lakes facts, and her videos started reaching millions of people. Now, @geodesaurus has 697K followers and 26.8 million video likes.
Rutherford’s followers have fallen in love with her infectious enthusiasm for the most interesting facts about water, geography and history. Before her current roles as adjunct professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and art director at Blue Lakes Fine Arts Camp, Rutherford was a high school art teacher.
She sees TikTok storytelling as a distinctive problem-solving exercise. “You have one minute to tell a story. What can you share in a minute? As a teacher, I find that so fun. It helps you take something, digest it, then spit it back out again.” Her videos about Great Lakes ice, spooky lakes and otherworldly geography are captivating to people around the world.
“I think sometimes people can be very intimidated by science. But art is for everybody. Science is artistic, the world is artistic and Mother Nature is artistic.” Rutherford says. She believes that Great Lakes objects and creatures already have a story, and she’s, “Just taking that story and engaging with it as a creative person and as a person who really believes in science and education.”
Find the rest of Wisconsin Sea Grant’s Voices of the Coast video series here.