Ice Study One

This is sculpture casually tossed up on the rocks by the waves and the receding tide. Can you believe this? Maybe this is heaven for the discarded ideas of the great twentieth century sculptors. Is this a Moore or a Modigliani?




Walking further up the coast, this is the north side of the point around Palmer Station.

Snow covering tossed u brash ice on the rocks. The snow melts away and leaves a great texture.



This is another effect that I like very much. I think when the glacier collapses some of the rubble just piles onto pieces of floating ice and freezes there it makes great bas-relief.

Like in this picture.


This one had the most amazing eroded surfaces I have seen yet. Sorry, It's a bit hard to see in the photo. Sticking the Canon lens into the middle of the ice just doesn't get the contrast up enough to get a feel for the detail. Today I will get Art to take the Nikon, the flash unit, and photo backdrop to see if we can increase the contrast and differentiate the forms. The little Canon just doesn't know what to focus on. Unfortunately, this piece of ice washed away during the night and there is very little at the shore today.


The next question is how to capture it with our mold material. This is pretty wild stuff and our mold techniques have not been stellar to date.

Look at this piece. Not much texture to speak of but look at the geology! How many years did this take to lay down? Those areas of white are bubbles is layers. they make for fascinating interior views into the ice, particularly when it's submerged.

This was our second attempt at mold making. We are using a Polytek Tim based silicone. The first day I forgot the catalyst. this second attempt was probably too thick. It has quite a few voids, but did take a reasonable facsimile of the surface.

Here is our third attempt. We mis-adjusted the scale and again got it too thick, with some air voids. Maybe four is the charm!
The Gould paid us a brief visit. It was returning the State Department Antarctica Treaty Inspectinon Team to South America after their visit down the Peninsula. They picked up three people, including Gitta for another attempt to land her at Cape Sherriff on Liivingston Island, South Shetlands. We expect to see the Gould again in about three weeks.

Laurence M. Gould in Arthur harbor, November 22, 2006.

Taking the travellers out to the ship.


There seems to be this crazy tradition here that people celebrate the departing of the ship by jumping into the harbor. If you ask me this is completely nutz! That water is below freezing, maybe -1ºC (31ºF). There is a compensation. We have a hot tub.

Fortunately, our doc, Malcolm is standing by.