GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Zoi Crampton hopes to inspire change in waste habits and water quality through art.
The member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe and alumna of the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) is showing her 2D art through Oct. 4 in ArtPrize, an international art competition and cultural festival held annually in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Crampton’s piece in ArtPrize, titled “In Our Bodies,” is one of 931 entries spread across 155 venues as the city transforms into a living canvas.
“In Our Bodies” is comprised of plastic that Crampton picked from Great Lakes beaches and features hand sewing, hand-dyed fabric and puzzle piecing.
A U-M alumna, Crampton took 10 courses in three years at UMBS along Douglas Lake in northern Michigan and most recently served as a teaching assistant (TA) this summer for the English course “Learning from the Landscape.”
The U-M Biological Station in Pellston, located about 20 miles south of the spot where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron known as the Straits of Mackinac, serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action.
With her ArtPrize entry this fall, Crampton hopes to start a meaningful conversation about plastic making a home in our bodies, both human and water.
“My goal in creating this piece was not to 'win' ArtPrize, but instead to get people aware of the health of our Great Lakes and care enough to make a change,” Crampton said.
In her artist’s statement, Crampton writes:
“The bones of ‘In Our Bodies’ is made from found plastic I harvested from the beaches of each of the Great Lakes. With plastic now found in our blood and breast milk, our bodies are not unlike the littered water. Plastic: birthed from us and our 'need' for efficiency, designed to be disregarded then forgotten, yet will outlive any and all. As we look ahead to what we leave future generations, will those we have forgotten be what survives us? In stories lost and systems dying, will we allow our legacy to be of litter and death? We must treat our water as kin, to care for her like our own. Without her, we all cease to be.”
Zoi Crampton’s art entry can be viewed in person through Oct. 4 at The Sovengard, a farm-to-table restaurant located at 1232 Bridge St NW near Lincoln Park in Grand Rapids. Online voting for ArtPrize closes Oct. 2 at 10 p.m.
“I feel incredibly lucky to have had Zoi both as a student and now as a collaborator and friend,” said Eva Roos, a UMBS instructor. “As a teaching assistant for my class, ‘Learning from the Landscape’, Zoi’s skillset and energy is completely unique and inspiring. She embodies a beautiful blend of expertise in arts, culture, ethnobotany, compassion, ecology… the list goes on. I’m so, so proud and inspired by her ArtPrize achievements.”
Crampton graduated from U-M in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in her dual majors of art and design from the Stamps School of Art and Design and conservation and biology from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.
She has a long history at UMBS, the more than 10,000-acre research and teaching campus about three and a half hours north of Ann Arbor.
As an undergraduate student at U-M, she took 10 field-based courses at UMBS:
- Summer 2023: Field Botany (EEB 556) and General Ecology Lab (EEB 373)
- Spring 2023: Biology of Birds (EEB 330) and General Ecology Lecture (BIOL 282)
- Summer 2022: GLACE program, which was comprised of three English courses
- Spring 2022: Agroecology (EEB 405) and Ethnobotany (EEB 455)
- August 2021: Florilegium: Creating a Plant Compendium extension (ARTDES 353)
In fact, artwork that Crampton created in the Florilegium class at UMBS — her first UMBS class — is part of a current exhibition organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts that runs until April 2026 titled Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation.
She valued her time at the field research campus in the Northwoods to practice both art and science.
In 2022, Crampton remembers studying “Three Sisters” in an experiment at the U-M Biological Station examining the traditional practice of growing maize, squash, and beans together to reap their mutual benefits.
While a student at U-M, she served as co-chair of the Native American Student Association and worked part time as a student coordinator for Native American Heritage Month.
After graduating from U-M, Crampton returned to UMBS as a teaching assistant for the English course “Learning from the Landscape” in 2024 and 2025.
“When heading back home to Grand Rapids, I miss the critters the most,” Crampton said. “This past year I was able to see three makoonsag — baby black bears — on Sugar Island, two snappers mating in Lake Huron, a phoebe family cuddling on a branch, and the loon family diving for breakfast outside my cabin. Being at UMBS is a sort of master class in being observant. Wherever I go, when I am still and quiet, a part of me is in northern Michigan.”
In 2024 she was the curatorial assistant at Stamps Gallery during an exhibit featuring the tradition of black ash basket making and renowned black ash basket weavers Kelly Church and Cherish Parrish.
“For me, an important part of my culture is black ash basketry and beadwork,” Crampton said. “My grandmother Anna Crampton was a master black ash basket maker and taught me how to weave and do beadwork. Now every time I do it, she is with me.”
Follow Zoi Crampton on Instagram to view more of her artwork.
In honor of Zoi Crampton’s ArtPrize entry and deep connection with UMBS, we’re proud to highlight her contributions to and experiences as part of our community.
Q: Tell us about yourself and what led you to pursue the intersection of art and science.
Art school was never really on my radar, and it was my mom who convinced me to go. I have long loved art — since I was first able to pick up a pencil — but my plan had always been to go into natural science. When I was in high school, I was really only considering programs in ecology and wildlife biology. My mom really advocated that I at least try art school and reassured that I could always change my mind if I didn’t like it. So, we made an agreement that I would apply to (one) art school and if I got in, I would go test the waters.
After my first semester at Stamps, I actually hated it and wanted to transfer out. Luckily, I had a wonderful advisor who 1) told me Stamps students couldn’t transfer out until after their first full year, and 2) that I should invest in classes that excite me and to not worry about the requirements just yet.
In my second semester I began to find my groove, I began balancing my art alongside science. I let science start to inform and feed my artistic practice. Prior, my art focused heavily on identity, and while I have not abandoned that, I began centering environment and conservation. Now my artistic practice is the conservation of culture alongside the conservation of environment.
John Benedict, a PitE professor (and UMBS instructor) who first introduced me to the program, had made a comment about creating art with refuse. I think it has inadvertently stuck with me and can be seen in my Grand Rapids Art Prize piece, as it was a fun challenge to reimagine what is usually disregarded and immediately forgotten — how to not let waste go to waste.
Q. What is it about the University of Michigan Biological Station that keeps you coming back year after year?
My first year it felt like home quickly. It wasn’t until 2024 that I realized part of that feeling was because I had been camping with my family in that area since I was a baby, just about 30 minutes south in Lewiston.
It is the perfect place to sit and observe. You learn so much from being quiet up there. Michigan in general is one of my biggest inspirations, and by connecting with land I am connecting with traditions, remembering the teachings and songs I thought I forgot. It’s being able to come back into the same area, continually making accounts of the communities I bear witness to; whether that be plant relatives, animal relatives, the bog, the water, etc. — that is part of what makes Pellston and the Biostation so special.
Being able to come back to the station year after year is a blessing I am beyond thankful for. But it is not only the physical place that beckons me, it is also the people that I meet at the station. Students, instructors and researchers alike, all reveal insight to the world, widening perspective and prompting curiosity. For instance, the guest lecturers that come and give a quick synopsis of their research, for me, always unveil a new perspective and mode of understanding the world. It has been an opportunity to see how these places have changed and developed with the station; being able to see the transformations since first re-opening up from COVID19 in 2021, to renovations from this past year, I’ve seen it all!
Q. Why do you believe it’s important to use art to communicate about nature and health?
For me, it’s imperative to utilize art as a tool in science communication. I so often see scientific posters crammed with important information, but so much is lost if one does not know how to read what is being presented.
While that is usually not an issue within the field, as scientists across the board are able to decipher the graphs and jargon, what of those who are unfamiliar in this terrain and are not able to digest this information as easily? What of the people who cannot visualize the numbers in the same way, or synthesize the statistics? I don’t think it is people seeing the information and not caring, I think it is more of a conversation on how the information is presented and who the audience is.
While it is important to have the scientific posters crammed with findings in order to succinctly present it to a possible donor/ funder, it is also important to have a poster that is clear and uncluttered to get ordinary people interested and invested in the findings presented.
In school, we were taught basic design principles, to best capture attention, to lead the eye, to provide space for the mind to digest the images and information. And while I do not regard myself as a graphic designer, I think with art it is such a diverse medium that there are endless possibilities to help visualize the information in order to be understood.
For plastic waste, to help people understand how much it surrounds us and how we are at the center of the issue, I created a sort of rain room of trash for my senior focus at Stamps. Titled N’Zaagidiwin Biish (I love you, water), I had strung up the plastic ornaments made from the refuse I harvested, creating a sort of trash cloud you enter. Looking into the shapes on the walls and on the floor, one would begin to recognize they are in the shape of each of the Great Lakes. Peering in further, one would see the mirrors hidden underneath the sand and trash, to recognize their role in what was in front of them.
In this way, art is able to evoke emotion and foster connection without writing it out explicitly to the audience. Not only is art able to help visualize information in published findings, it is able to tap into emotion that the paper may be missing. Published findings and scientific studies do not have the same privilege of leeway to garner connection. It relies on clear, concise verbiage, sterile of anything flowery or emotional. Art can help highlight a deeper connection that sterile academic papers alone may fail to do.
Q: What was your most meaningful class, moment or project at UMBS? What makes it stand out?
The most meaningful class for me at UMBS was Ethnobotany. Before, what I had learned from my grandparents and other community members/guides, I had sort of taken for granted. The class revealed the weight of the information I carried. It sort of gave validity to what I was taught in that I began to recognize the incredible gift it was that these teachings were given to me. It also opened my eyes to the importance of carrying this information and how to share and who to share it with. Ethnobotany gave an opportunity to center culture in my scientific pursuits.
Q: How have your experiences at UMBS informed your decisions about a career path? What’s next and where do you hope to be in 10 years?
It definitely has inspired me to go into teaching! I have completely adored my time as a TA, and learning from the class has been eye opening in illuminating that (I think) I want to go into art education.
I feel that creativity is stolen from people at such a young age with people being told their art isn’t good, that it doesn't look right, that it doesn’t fit the criteria. Expression being such a vulnerable endeavor, people are understandably a bit shy about engaging with it. Thinking “I’m not good enough”, “I don’t know how to do that”, “I don’t even want to try, I know it’ll look bad”, people would often prefer to not try at all than fail. I want to teach art, not necessarily as a way to hone in on craftsmanship or technique (while that is great and good), it is more so to get people confident in themselves.
I believe everyone is an artist and has the capacity to create great things. For me, art is not fully about the final product, it is about asking questions, exploring and discovering new truths, and being able to argue for your points and perspective. It is about challenging your perspective with how you see and engage with the world, it is about receiving feedback and critique, it is about giving insight in a helpful way. It is about critical thinking and trying to understand the context in which a piece was created, it is about synthesizing information and moving with intention. I am continuing to learn traditions and teachings to be able to carry that and give it to the next 7 generations, and I hope in 10 years to be able to pursue art alongside science as my career full time.
Q: What is your favorite thing to do at UMBS?
I absolutely love going for walks and swimming! This past year I tried going for a dip-a-day — I made it to the half-way point in the month and then fell off sadly. I absolutely adore being able to dive and swim around in Douglas Lake and sort of spook myself that Dougie is lurking in the deep water below as I tread water in the fog of the morning. I always see amazing critters on my walks. My favorite was running into a baby porcupine learning how to climb a tree! I was quiet enough where he didn’t realize I was there and got to watch for about 15 minutes. It was very special.
Q. You’ve immersed yourself in the UMBS community. Tell me about the energy here on campus when students and researchers are not doing fieldwork or working in the lab.
I often like to be alone when there is downtime just because I am more introverted than extroverted, but the overall energy is very welcoming and kind. People are always organizing trips off campus together and everyone bonds super quickly. I am still great friends with the different cohorts I’ve entered into the station with. The incredible people I’ve met from the station follow me beyond. I just got back from the ren faire [Michigan Renaissance Festival] with my ‘Biostation baddies’ and have another trip planned with my ‘buggies’ soon (these are the group chat names that I did not come up with). Through the station I’ve met some of my best friends!
Q: What do you miss most when the field season ends in northern Michigan and you return home to Grand Rapids?
When heading back home to Grand Rapids, I miss the critters the most. This past year I was able to see three makoonsag (baby black bears) on Sugar Island, two snappers mating in Lake Huron, a phoebe family cuddling on a branch, and THE loon family diving for breakfast outside my cabin. I could go on with a list of the Petoskey stones I garnered from the road, the impressive bug collection I’ve been beefing up, and the plants I’ve pressed, but it would be never ending. Being at UMBS is a sort of master class in being observant. Wherever I go, when I am still and quiet, a part of me is in northern Michigan.
Q: If there’s one thing you want a prospective student to know about UMBS, what would that be?
If you are introverted, it can be overwhelming, but DO NOT let that stop you! There is time and space to go and recharge by being alone, but this a great place to challenge yourself in a multitude of ways. Also loving bugs is not a prerequisite, but it would help. No matter how big of an adjustment it may be, the station will be a place you keep in your heart forever. It is inspiring to see the care and work people put in. It will instill an appreciation for the environment and everyone who is working in this field. Also, time behaves differently at the station, and in the blink of an eye 7 years will have passed, so cherish the experience!
The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.
Our vast campus engages all of the senses. Its remote, natural setting nurtures deep thought and scientific discovery.
Founded in 1909, UMBS supports long-term research and education through immersive, field-based courses and features state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for data collection and analysis to help any field researcher be productive. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.
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