[waves crashing] [mellow music] - Geo Rutherford: That's why I love the lakes because I feel like they snuck up on me for the last 20 years of my life, and I wasn't expecting to fall in love with them.

And instead, it's kind of a long love story instead of a meet-cute... [laughs] Or a short, instantaneous love at first sight.

♪ ♪ I guess I should say, um, yes, hello.

My name is Geo Rutherford.

I am a printmaker, a book artist, and a educator, as well as a content creator on the internet.

♪ ♪ Geo Rutherford: Art became a really big interest for me in middle school and high school.

I took a printmaking class.

And actually, the first-ever print I made was horrendous.

And it made me so mad.

[laughs] I was, like, so upset that I was so bad at it that I just kept doing it.

And it became kind of an obsession for me.

I always made work about climate change, climate issues, environmental issues.

And that's a huge domain of artwork making.

[machines whir] I have about six prints that look like this where they're supposed to emulate the material on the shore.

We have the invasive Japanese lady beetle.

You have some freshwater snail shells.

You've got a button, a tampon applicator.

And it gets pushed up usually during storms.

So it ends up being this long line on the beach kind of pushed by the waves in these chunks and these patterns.

And so this is kind of a artist's interpretation of those patches of beach finds.

[waves crashing] When you stand and look out at the Great Lakes, and you're on the shore, and the water is lapping at your feet, you have no idea the greater issues that the Great Lakes are facing.

You can't know that from just standing on the shore.

Ooh, tampon applicator!

Instead, you can pick through the sand and piece together a story of what's really happening with the Great Lakes through the material that you find, you know, on that precipice between the earth and the water.

You have plastic.

You have invasive plants, invasive species, invasive fish.

There's all sorts of stuff that gets turned over to the shore that I kind of end up collecting.

But it can be especially thrilling when you find something unexpected, like a tiny Barbie spoon or a little spider that's made of plastic.

I get so excited about that stuff, which is kind of unexpected.

I feel like most people don't get excited about disgusting beach trash, but I do.

This is the kind of thing I'm like, whoo-hoo!

Like, the best thing I've ever found.

[laughs] Isn't it gross?

I love her!

[laughs] I've done videos on all sorts of stuff with the Great Lakes.

My very first Great Lakes educational TikTok where I did not know what I was doing.

I didn't want my head to block the pictures I wanted to show.

So I put my face at the bottom, and I said, um, hello, yes.

Um, hello, yes.

Can we talk about this giant body of water hanging out in the middle of North America, please?

What an amazing place to make videos about because the Great Lakes have so many awesome topics.

I love the Stannard Rock Lighthouse.

Yes, hello, loneliest place in North America.

Did you say Stannard Rock Lighthouse in the middle of Lake Superior?

The Apostle Islands, the Pictured Rocks.

Why are there sand dunes in Michigan?

So many sand dunes.

Why are they there?

So I've done all sorts of videos about Great Lakes.

[popping] Even whitefish butthole, which is actually one of the most fascinating evolutionary topics that you can talk about with the Great Lakes-- I made a video on it.

I've got a really interesting story about whitefish and their buttholes.

Oh, my gosh!

I love spooky lakes.

And spooky lakes is another example of Geo just being like, man, what if I do this thing?

Um, yes, hello.

It's October 1st.

Do you know what that means?

It's spooky lake month, where we do 31 days of haunted hydrology.

I had all of these lakes that I realized are so spooky, just lakes that are radioactive or lakes that are made of salt, lakes that are acid, lakes that are made of lava.

There are so many weird lakes on this planet.

I talk about anything that's water related that's spooky.

[waves crashing] People love the Great Lakes, and they're passionate about the Great Lakes.

And they're so excited that the word is out, that the Great Lakes are something that everybody can now be excited about.

And the Great Lakes are kind of this ultimate leftover of that time 10,000, 12,000 years ago.

So they are critical for our life here, the way that we've been living it.

And if we want to continue to be able to live hand in hand with the Great Lakes, then we need to take care of them and be aware that they are an important and critical part of the way that we function here on this continent.

♪ ♪