This project, "An Artist Unpacks Palmer Station" would consist of drawings chronicling an artist?s immersion in this remote setting dedicated to scientific pursuit. The drawings would inventory visible manifestations of climate change and to seek to explain them through interaction with the station?s scientific community. The routines of daily life would also be recorded, allowing the drawings to present a full picture of human existence in this singular location. By deconstructing and then reassembling the details of travel, research, life forms, and landscape, the project would allow parallels to emerge between scientific study and art-making as paths to understanding.
As with the artist?s previous projects, the drawings would be executed in colored pencil on vertically oriented, scroll-like sheets of white paper, uniform in width but varying in length as the subject requires. (Twelve inches wide and up to five feet in length.) In style, they present visual inventories, collections of discreet objects drawn in miniature (about one-inch square) and set row upon row. Each drawing in turn becomes a page in a vast pictographic text that gives viewers insight into what it takes to perform specific tasks or be in particular settings. Photography would also be used to record objects and circumstances so that the more time-consuming process of drawing could be extended beyond the stay in Antarctica and to minimize the artist?s presence when necessary.
During the close to two months spent in Antarctica I drew, made gouache and watercolor paintings from observation, and took (digital) photographs as well as videos at all sites visited. These locations included Cape Royds, where I spent five days, the Dry Valleys’ Lake Hoare Field Camp where I was for three weeks, Cape Crozier, for three days and I stayed a long weekend at the South Pole. In between sojourns, for roughly three weeks in total, I worked all over McMurdo Station. Wherever I went, I gathered visual information, and made finished works or accumulated images for later reference. I also kept a blog with text and photos throughout http://elise-on-ice.blogspot.com It provided pictures and text for the many people (including elementary school students) following my travels. I left Antarctica having finished many postcard-sized paintings, a dozen 10 x 14" paintings, two 22 x 30" watercolors and two 30 x 42 gouache and watercolor landscape paintings. The two large landscape paintings, one done at Lake Hoare, the other from the library in Crary Lab at McMurdo Station, served as backgrounds for a vertical "list" of significant camp /McMurdo objects, respectively, drawn with colored pencils, upon return to NYC. Lake Hoare Field Camp is included in this report’s images. For the most part I worked outside, adding layers of clothing and gloves the longer I sat. I knew it was time to quit when my watercolors froze and became unworkable on the glass palette. I also did several indoor projects including two 30-page painted accordion books, one of the views out of every window at Lake Hoare camp and the other of what is seen out of selected windows from many of the buildings at McMurdo Station (the former also included in the report.) Making the McMurdo book involved wandering into spaces not generally visited— I ended up drawing (and informally interviewing people) from the office of Freight Operations, from the Carpentry trailer and upstairs lounge, from the chapel and other from locations. I was able to be a "fly on the wall" and get a sense of what happened behind the scenes at this busy research station. The McMurdo book is soon to be digitally printed in a large edition. I also I kept two journals of drawings and writings. Part of my practice for many years has been to make a drawing of everything I bring to and take away from wherever I travel. As a result of this trip there are two drawings of all that went with me and all that came back with me from Antarctica—2 vertical scroll-like color pencil list drawings –the "return" drawing has tiny depictions of all the art made in Antarctica. The largest project coming out of my grant thus far has been to document the entire trip in one chronological series of drawings entitled Ninety-Degree Draft. This work consists of ten 30 x 42" gouache and colored pencil drawing/paintings on paper. The background for all ten parts is the continent of Antarctica painted in white on a field of blue. On top of this is text and over a thousand small drawings chronicling every aspect of the trip, from the application process, to helicopter and plane flights, to the interaction with scientists and their research equipment, the tents I stayed in, to many views of the landscape, to portraits of the many people there, ending with this drawing itself. Time spent with environmental scientist David Ainley is documented, as he did penguin research at Cape Crozier and Cape Royds. Numerous landscape drawings depict the long hikes in the Taylor Valley of the Dry Valleys, done with Italian microbiologist Luigi Michaud and geologist Devin Castendyk. In addition there are narratives and images from helicopter journeys with Luigi as he collected samples and I drew. By following the green "directional" arrows on the drawings one can read and view a complete narrative of the preparation, transit to, and time spent in Antarctica. Four of the drawings are pictured here. The project continues as I am now making small oil paintings on wood panels, using the drawings, paintings, videos and photos made onsite, as references. I also just beginning to edit the many videos taken there and they will ultimately become part of a larger piece combined with hand- drawn animation. The work is all leading to an exhibition- venue still to be determined. A magazine article and at least one book are both in planning stages. The extensive documentation, through the art made on site, and continued upon return, will most definitely "Unpack Antarctica." It will allow the viewer a comprehensive view of what two months spent at this virtually inaccessible continent might be like.
