In January of 2025, I stumbled across the Instagram page of an incredible photographer based in Duluth, Minnesota. George Ilstrup works as a 5th grade teacher at Minnehaha Elementary School in Two Harbors. George finds creative ways to integrate his photography into the classroom through creative writing practices for his students and to illustrate the topics and locations they’re discussing within the curriculum. Photography became more than a hobby for him during his undergraduate experience at UMD, and it has since spanned far beyond the North Shore as he chases storms down south through the Midwest, and during his adventures traveling abroad. I became captivated with a Reel George posted that he captured using a drone one icy morning on Lake Superior. The video features overview shots of jagged pancake ice all broken up in the harbor next to the Superior Entry Lighthouse in Superior, Wisconsin. Otherwise known as Wisconsin Point, the lighthouse was established in 1913 and sits at the end of a concrete walkway, its green light blinking day and night to mark the start of the Superior Entry Channel for ships. This overview image stuck with me, so much so I felt the need to take a chance and reach out to Geroge, to see if he would allow me to use this still as the reference image for a reductive screen print I wanted to make a reality. And he kindly said yes!
 
An important component to my print practice are the images I take, treasure, and carefully sort through and draw inspiration from. The environments I choose to translate into woodcuts or screen prints are places of great importance, ones I want to document in my own visual language and seal into my own artistic time capsule. My practice is a visual diary for myself, and for those who have seen these sites themselves, or admired them from afar. It’s a way for me to practice preservation from a distance, since most of these locations exist far from where I call home, and to encourage myself and others to consider the choices in our day to day lives that may ultimately affect the state in which these natural environments continue to exist long term. I am so grateful to other artists like George, dedicating their practice to similar types of preservation through documentation. And I am even more grateful to George for trusting me with this collaboration, and for putting up with all of the Instagram story tags through this process. 
 
If you would like to view George’s work more extensively, you can find him on Instagram @georgeduluth and on his website: https://georgeduluth.smugmug.com