I was honored to give a short presentation about my art project to this crowd. It was a nice milestone to summarize the past several years, researching and developing artwork about ice cores and glaciers. It was even more nice to get a genuinely interested response to the presentation. They were glad to have an artist show up interested in their work. But also, I think that my images and story offered a unique view to their work, just as their research gave me new insight into my work. To have this cross communication was one of my primary goals and satisfying.

After returning from the conference, I jumped back into the studio, madly getting the paintings and prints ready for exhibitions at Francine Seders Gallery and the Gage Academy of Art. It is a bit difficult to shift gears from creating new images, to the various tasks involved in preparing for two shows and public presentations. I have so much more to explore with this work and part of me wants to stay buried in the studio to wander in the big white and clear spaces of this subject. But it is also valuable to have the work seen, to brave the public’s response – whatever that may be. It will be interesting to have that perspective, however, I look forward to the next year, making more prints about the WAIS Divide field camp and creating a catalog with stories and images of this journey.

The trip north into the Coast Range took me through a glaciated landscape that looked as if it had recently emerged from under the ice. In fact the land is relatively fresh; the last glacier receded from these valleys less than 13,000 years ago, a blink, geologically speaking. I thought a lot about West Antarctica winding through these valleys. Both of these areas have had ice covering them, are next to a coastline and if (or when) the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, it will have an inland water body surrounded by mountain ranges, very similar to the northwest. I began to think about the ice as a shell, covering the earth and suppressing the potential for life. The valleys we drove through felt young and raw.

Once at the White Saddle Ranch, we settled in to wait for good weather and the need for a helicopter trip to bring down ice core from the field camp on the Col. My husband Paul and I spent the next day sketching and made dinner for graduate student Kelley Sterle, who was coordinating logistics and supplies. That night we heard from the field camp that the weather was stable and they had 20 meters of ice core to be taken down to a freezer truck waiting at the Ranch. I was in luck, so began tossing through all my equipment to head up early the next morning. I had to take a full compliment of mountaineering gear in the extremely unlikely event that we would have to climb to a lower elevation (I chose not to contemplate this too deeply). I also took up some sketching supplies and what I hoped would be treats for the research group.

Yes, the helicopter trip was amazing. The exceedingly competent pilot Les pointed out various features as we flew over the valley towards the peaks of the Coast Range, including where he had grown up. The helicopter rose above the green and browns of the lower elevations and into a white and granite land. I was surrounded by glaciers swirling between peaks, broken and cobbled ice falls, steep avalanche slopes striped with crevasses. There were several aqua blue melt lakes glowing in the middle of the scimitar glacier. In about half an hour we crested the edge of Combatant Col, gleaming white in the early morning sun. From our height, the tents of the camp looked like little dots, but the tower of the drill was distinct and I saw several folks waiting at the landing site ready to load the cores drilled the night before.

Camp leader Niki Bowerman gave me a tour and then, like most of the other team, retreated to her tent for much needed rest. Summer daytime temperatures can reach well into the 60′s on the Col, so the team drilled, logged and packed up the cores at night. I set myself up to sketch the two peaks, Combatant and Waddington, that defined the col like two bookends. The other two edges of the Col dropped away steeply to flow down the Scimitar and Tiedemann glaciers creating a slightly bowed table of snow about the size of two football fields. Looking Southwest, dark gray granite spires poked above white and blue and the Homathko Ice Field spread like cheese cake across a range in the distance. To the north, endless peaks floated into the distance. Though not visible, the coast and densely populated Vancouver Island were less than 20 miles away. Unbelievable to me as I contemplated overland travel and listened to avalanches rumble off of Mt Waddington.

To avoid being sunburned to a crisp, I popped back and forth between my solo tent, the group tent and sketching on the snow. I took a short nap and prepped food for dinner, wanting to stay awake for part of the drilling operation. It turned out to be a good idea given the night ahead. Various members of the crew emerged and retreated throughout the day, but at about 7 pm everyone gathered in the group tent looking for coffee and food to prepare for the nights drilling.

Set apart from the camp, the drill tower stood outside, secured by guy wires. A small box housed the motor and controls to raise and lower the cable and drill. This drill has been operating on remote glaciers throughout the world for several decades, though most of the parts have been replaced over that time. It is a simple, but effective design for drilling shallow cores. The seasoned drill operator, Bella, uses experience and finesse to fine tune and troubleshoot variable conditions. The DISC drill used for the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project, on the other hand, must cut through 2 miles of ice, and preserve the ice at a much colder temperature. This state of the art drill is housed inside a metal arch building and is operated remotely using a complex computer program that receives input from multiple sensors mounted on the drill. I admit to feeling biased towards the relatively low-tech machine, as it appeals to my anachronistic tendencies. But I know that it isn’t capable of pulling up ice and atmosphere trapped in the ice sheet 100,000 years ago.

Now back at my studio, I am using my sketches of the peaks and col to create a triptych of drawings. I grapple with the range of scales and tones of white. The glacier landscapes have a beauty that is so frail and a strength that I am incapable of fully grasping. The white and the wind pushes all other thoughts aside. So I work on the images, my goal to convey a tiny glimpse of these astounding places.

The art and science class presentations were a little bit different from each other. I first visited an 8th grade art class at Eckstein Middle School. In this particular class, the kids have chosen to take art as an elective for the entire year so I had a luxurious 1 1/2 hours for our activity. We began by talking about precipitation; visualizing snow falling through the air and what it would encounter on its way to the ground. I then distributed the tubes, “tampers”, and the marshmallows and particles. Each table of 4 kids were instructed to press the particles into marshmallows and add them to the core tubes. As the “crystals” accumulated, they tamped them down to mimic the pressure of more accumulation. At a certain point I yelled out “Volcano” when they were instructed to dump a little pile of Nerd candy to create an ash layer. This turned out to be a very exciting moment; they were very interested in seeing the Nerd layer in the cores they created. The kids then were asked to make drawings of the cores. They blew me away with their talent and focus. I love the variety of the styles. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see some of their drawings.

The following week I joined Emily Elasky’s 8th grade science classes at Mercer Middle School. There were four classes back to back (whew), with a lunch break in the middle, so I had to make sure everything could be set up and cleaned quickly. Again the kids worked in groups of four students and were predictably agog over the opportunity to do a science project with marshmallows. The students made their cores and were then asked to write responses to several questions: What events in nature would affect the distribution of different particles? How would you test the core to determine the distribution of particles? What could you learn about the climate from testing for particles? The project reinforced several concepts about climate, how glaciers form and how the ice traps particles.

After the activity, I showed them pictures from my journey to Antarctica, talked about the National Science Foundation artists program and showed a video about the drill operations (thanks to Heidi Roop and Thomas Bauska). I wanted the students to see how similar the pursuit of science and art can be and to illustrate the myriad ways that we can all learn more about the world around us. Of course it is impossible to gauge the influence that my visit had on these kids. I know that they rarely get an opportunity to learn about the diverse ways that artists develop ideas. Or to consider the wide range of opportunities that are available for scientists, artists or virtually any occupation.  I assumed I would never be able to travel to Antarctica, certainly not to create art. But once I determined that it might be possible, the path to this project opened up for me.

Drawings from Erin Shafkind’s 8th Grade Art Class at Eckstein Middle School

EPSON MFP image

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The plate is 18″x18″ and is inspired by patterns of gas bubbles in ice core samples. I have been creating different images for a couple of years now, but it seems to hold my interest. I have made about 15 smaller and 6 or so larger plates, and print them in different combinations to create a large series of monotypes (meaning that they are each unique, rather than in an edition).

The next plate is from a newer series I am working on to document the WAIS Divide camp. This plate shows the “moose” door into the drill arch. You may be able to see the image in this photograph. The arch was built in 2004 and at this point is almost buried by the drifting snow. More soon!

“Easton Glacier” 24″x48″ 2010, graphite, gesso, acrylic

Traveling to and existing in the beautiful white expanse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been a dream since childhood. Now, back in my daily life, holding onto the experience is like holding onto ice that will inevitable melt or sublimate away. All I can do is watch as it morphs in my brain from a series of complex and layered memories to more concrete, but remote stories that can be stored and recalled as I sift through ideas to visually express “the place of white”.

Back in the studio, these memories are requiring a bit of processing, so to speak. Prior to my trip south, I was creating drawings of Northwest glaciers (see Easton Glacier, above). Now, I am making lots of sketches and experiments to flesh out my Antarctica “field notes” into more developed work that carries the thread of the previous drawings, but hopefully captures this place.

It is a bit terrifying to venture into such unknown territory. The white space is so unlike the dirt and bark of my previous subjects. It requires me to pay attention to what is really important about making new work. Are artists required to stay within boundaries defined by previous work, or are we free to explore any media and marks that express the new ideas? And where is the balance between continuity and monotony?

The weather station at WAIS is monitored several times a day to determine wind speed & direction, temperature, pressure and ceiling hieght. Sometimes a weather balloon is launched to confirm the cloud ceiling for aviation.

Weather drives everything in the United States Antarctic Program; flights happen or don’t, camps get re-supplied or don’t, work progresses or doesn’t. Even moderate winds in sub-freezing temperatures can make outdoor work difficult or impossible. Of course knowing weather conditions would make planning that much easier. But predicting the weather here is more complicated, and less precise than I realized.

Most of us are used to “double doppler” radar and other advanced technology to help us plan our day. Though weather becomes difficult to predict more than several days in advance, we can usually rely on the 48 hour forecast. But there is far less satellite coverage and monitoring in Antarctia than almost anywhere else in the world. I spoke with Mike Carmody the head of meteorology for Raytheon in support of the USAP, who, lucky for me, was stationed at WAIS to learn a bit about how weather observations and forecasts are made.

There are two centers in the United States that monitor conditions here. First is the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They collect and distribute the data from approximately 140 automated weather stations installed around the continent (to compare, the US has weather monitoring every 40 miles or so) and manned stations operated by the US and other nations.  The other is the Navy’s Space Warfare Center, a civilian naval facility in Charleston that takes this data, plus satellite and ground observations from several locations to forecast the weather for aviation.

Like all weather forecasting, a model is used to predict conditions in the future. But here is the thing to remember, models used to predict weather in the United States are informed by over 100 years of continous weather data. Antarctica has only been continously occupied for 50 years, and only in a few locations. So the model that is used to predict weather here is based on very scant data.  Plus there is the added complication of conflicting information between satellite and ground observations. The satellite picture gives a broad sweep, but cannot see under the clouds to determine visibility, etc. The ground observer can describe current conditions accurately, but cannot see beyond that. So operations has to weigh all of this information before sending planes into the sky risking that they might not be able to land in poor visibility and flat light.

Watercolor sketch of my beloved "Big Red"

It really drove home for me another important goal of the ice core being acquired at the WAIS Divide. Data from the core will give very accurate information for annual temperatures and atmospheric conditions for the past 10,000 years. This will be added to the weather models to improve predictions. In the meantime, I don’t ever go anywhere in Antarctica without my Big Red (the high loft, very warm coat issued to all participants in the USAP)!

Yesterday, I ran around getting my gear together, but also had time to join a tour to Discovery Hut.  This is Scott’s hut just on the edge of McMurdo, at Hut Point.  I can walk out there any time, but must join an official tour to see inside.

It turns out, this is just fine with me; the place is a dump!  Super smelly carcasses hanging everywhere and tattered clothes; guys are such slobs! ;-)  I really appreciate my EWC (extreme weather clothing).  Its quite an improvement from 100 years ago.

On the walk back to town, I reflected on the processes of historic accretion.  We know more about Scott’s and Shackleton’s expeditions in part due to the artifacts they left behind.  Roald Amundson, on the other hand, traveled light and left very little behind, aside from a tent at the pole – long buried in the ice.

Our current ethics dictate that we also leave no trace on the continent, or at least minimize our trace as much as possible.  So I think it is ironic that one of the best planners and stewards (whether that was his goal or not) of the heroic age is the least well known.  I suppose this is an obvious truth about the preservation of stories, but it felt particularly poinant as I wandered through Scott’s tailings.

Now I am off to make last minute preparations before my flight.  You will know if I got out soon. – Ciao from The Ice!

After fun with the UHF radio, we donned buckets and tried to find our instructor outside, to simulate searching for a person in a white out.  I had seen this scenario in Herzog’s movie Encounters at the End of The World, but couldn’t imagine how completely turned around one can become.  Fortunately, I had a skilled team member in the lead and he actually found the instructor.

The time went by very fast and soon enough we were headed back to town.  I had a quick shower and then joined a tour of the pressure ridges.  This is an area next to Scott Base where the pressure from tides and the transition of sea ice to land has caused the sea ice to uplift.  It is spectacular; though I was tired from the past two days, I was glad I went.  We walked along the ridges for about a kilometer, all of us snapping our cameras.  Near the end of the walk, we came upon a female seal and her pup.  The wildlife is very cute here.

The days at McMurdo have been very busy and full.  I spend an inordinate amount of time simply keeping track of my gear.  Between organizing gear, attending trainings and touring the area by foot, I have not had much spare time to go through photos and create a slide show.  Tomorrow I fly out to the WAIS field camp, when my real work begins.  I will also have a bit more time to process my photos.  If my flight goes as scheduled, I will have time for one more post.  Otherwise, I fly out at 6:15am, and will be out of range for all but plain text.  My descriptions will have to suffice until I get back to the comforts of McMurdo around the new year.

Yesterday I had time to draw for a few hours, a very grounding experience.  I also took a short walk around the base and finally got a full nights sleep so am much sharper today.  Discovery Hut is on the edge of “town”, down one of the dirt roads that crisscross (higglety pigglety comes to mind) the collection of buildings that comprise McMurdo Station.  It was nice to get away to Hut Point; it is kept unaltered from the days it was occupied by the Scott and Shackleton expeditions.  It is corny, but I felt a bit spooked – my overly active imagination “felt” their presence – a product of too much explorer reading, no doubt.

It was about 10pm and the sun was low in the southeast.  McMurdo sits at approximately 77° S, 166°E, so the sun turns around us, rising higher during the day and lower at “night”.  I haven’t allowed myself to stay up late to see how low it gets.  As I am a short-timer in McMurdo, my dorm is interior in the building, with no windows.  It’s convenient for sleeping, but disorienting.  Tomorrow I go out onto the Ross Ice Shelf to attend the two day Happy Camper Course.  I will no doubt stay up late then and get a better sense of the light.

Here is a shot looking almost directly south.  Observation Hill is on the left and in the distance is the edge of Black Island.

I am offline for two days while out on the ice at school.  See you on Sunday (Saturday in the USA).

Scientist are drilling a 3.5 kilometer ice core (that’s almost 19 Space Needles!) in order to gain a more detailed understanding of climate change for the past 100,000 years or so.  For me, the core represents a profound record of time and memory.  The earth saves its history for us and the scientists are the augers of this knowledge.  I am humbled by the opportunity to document this field work in images and words.

During the past two months, I have worked with my very helpful program manager at The US Antarctic Program to schedule flights, equipment and training.  There was also a gauntlet of medical and dental tests to endure (physically and monetarily).  I am now packing and making last minute arrangements.

From Seattle, I fly to Christchurch, New Zealand, where I will be outfitted with extreme weather gear (EWG) from the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC).  I will then take a C-17 transport plane to the McMurdo Base to spend a week learning how to live and work safely on the continent.  This includes Happy Camper School, an overnight camping on the ice shelf near McMurdo.  Word has it that the night you spend in your own show shelter will be the coldest of your life.  I have been assured that the tent I stay in while on the plateau will be “warm” in comparison.

Above is a schematic map highlighting my trip from New Zealand to the WAIS Field Camp.  Once at WAIS, I will spend most of my time drawing, taking photos and helping with tasks around the camp.  A priority will be to draw outside whenever the weather allows.  Even on a calm day, I will likely be battling 10knot winds.  Due to these extremes, I am keeping my gear light and relatively small.  Drawings will be done on 1/4 sheets (15″x11″) with pencils.  I am taking a field watercolor set for painting indoors.  I have several snow activities planned, including taking rubbings of a snow pit, creating ice time capsules to photograph and skiing on the plateau.

Once underway, I plan to post daily, as internet access allows, to chronicle my trip.  Check back and send warm thoughts my way!