Antarctica

Studio Work

2008-01-17T20:53:00.000-03:00

We're working in the studio now. I'll be posting pictures. Check this space...

Return Through the Gerlache Passage

2007-01-12T20:13:00.000-03:00

We boarded the Laurence M. Gould for our journey back on December 23, 2006. Going back through the Gerlache Passage was even more exciting and beautiful than coming the other way. If you look back towards the beginning of the blog, you can see the brilliant day that greeted us in Antarctica. On the way back the day was overcast, with mysterious lines of clouds clinging to the mountains on either side of the passage. I couldn't put down the camera , or if I did, it was to pick up the video camera. I could barely grab a sandwich!

As the ship turned away, Palmer Station seemed to fade into the distance. But no sooner was it gone when suddenly the scenery was utterly compelling. We saw whales numerous times, although none with the Canon digital. This combination of granite and fog, ice and water was more mysterious than any landscape I had ever seen. Only the photos of Wang Wusheng come even close.

Usually it didn't look sinister but that first picture reminds me of the pilots I have known who joke about granite clouds. The changes happened fast. Focusing on one point sometimes yielded several different photos, both because of the motion of the ship and also the movement of the clouds. The scale of the mountains is not terribly evident in these small photos. But I estimate the cliffs as 30 to 75 meters high.

Late in the day we passed Smith Island. Antarctica was retreating in the distance. The low angle of sun had us seeing night for the first time in nearly two months. I wondered how I would react, but I slept so soundly, it was a relief.

We had an almost endless sunset that went on for hours.

Here is mate, Larry Brissette at the controls. Since there were only five passengers on board, the crew invited us to be in the bridge. Art and I took them up on their offer and spent a good deal of time talking and watching the navigation process as we crossed the Drake. It was so smooth that they were calling it Drake's Lake! Lucky, because we had talked to passengers on a cruise ship that moored at Palmer and they had encountered 10 to 15 meter waves. A part of me would have liked to experience something like that, but the prospect of being tied to my bed for three days was not too appealing.

This is how we celebrated Christmas Day. Captain Scott Flanagan gave us a "safety demo" by shooting of flares and letting us shoot some off the stern of the ship.

This is the chart and log as we approached Cape Horn. We continued up the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to the mouth of the Straight of Magellan. Once inside the straight, we met the pilot who guided us into port at Punta Arenas.

Somewhere in the Drake Passage I snapped this picture of the ship board computer screen. It was Christmas day, day 359 of the year, 17:04 GMT. Our position was at 55+ degrees South latitude, 64º west longitude. We were headed almost due north 345º with a bearing of 348º, making 11.5 knots of headway. The wind was coming from the due north at 25 or 22 knots (different gauges). Our heading is toward Isla Estados.

The salinity of the water was 33.7 (not sure the units), Water temperature was 5.362ºC (up at least 5º from our departure at Palmer.) Depth is 3953 meters (more than 10,000 feet!) Air temp is 10.2ºC. Relative humidity 76%. Wind Chill -1.1ºC. Barometric pressure measured 983.5 millibars.

Here is Punta Arenas on our arrival. I was overwhelmed by the color. Just seeing green trees was an intense experience. I like Punta Arenas. It is a stopping over point for many outdoor treks and the town is full of camping stores like North Face and Patagonia. (This is Patagonia, after, all.) Maybe someday I'll come back and explore South America from here.

I have a lot to say about Antarctica, what I saw, what I learned. I'll be posting form time to time about the progress on my work in the studio. I hope to display the cast glass along with the photography and video and perhaps some cast ice, as well. I'm just looking for the right venue. I'd still like to post my thoughts on the vast visual input of my ice studies. Another might tackle the implications of global climate change and the vast re-ordering of the earth which is happening under our feet.

I'd like to especially than the National Science Foundation for making this magical voyage possible, along with their contractor for Antarctica, Raytheon Polar Services. Everybody was wonderful and more than helpful. I saw more, accomplished more than I ever could have imagined.

Some of your comments that were posted also deserve a response. I didn't take full advantage of the blog format, but what a blast this has been! Go Blogger!

If you wish to contact me, please write druth@glass.com. I'll try to answer all questions.

Last Day at Old Palmer

2007-01-10T02:31:00.000-03:00

On the last full day we were at Palmer Station, I wanted to go out in the Zodiac one last time. Art demurred. I think he was looking forward to getting on the Gould and heading home. I wanted to see the one part of the glacier face that we had not been able to see from the Zodiacs. Curt Smith was eager to go. Our technology wizard, he ran the computer network and knew about all the electronics.

This channel was created by a collapse of the glacier in 2003 that cut off Old Palmer from the main part of Anvers Island. The channel itself was too narrow to allow boating, because of its nearness to the calving glacier face. But by climbing over Old Palmer we were able to get close and see the new ice. It was worth it because the whole scene was so fresh and pure. Plus it connected the parts we had seen from the boat.

The famous skua. Not sure if this is a south polar skua or a brown skua. They are slightly obnoxious birds that are like giant seagulls. The eat penguin eggs and chicks, and are scavengers. Not too popular among the Happy Feet crowd, but hey, a bird's gotta eat! They were very protective of their own nests. Art got a picture of one coming at him dead on, also on Old Palmer. We heard they like to kick as they go by so he ducked, but got the photo anyway.

We jumped over a lot of rocks. Its amazing how much of a rubble pile is left in the wake of glacier retreat. My feet, ankles and knees hurt for weeks!

We were hoping to take one more look at the ice arch. But a colony of elephant seals had gathered in front of our access. These two young males were wrestling right in our path. We went around them.

The Gould had pulled in a day earlier, loading freight from Palmer. It was there to take us home. A bittersweet ending. We deleted ourselves from the computer systems, the lab and our dorm room. All of our stuff was packed and ready to ship. By time I took this picture, they had already loaded our freezer container that had been on the edge of the dock. That night we stayed on the Gould in preparation for leaving the next morning.

More To Come

2006-12-30T10:48:00.000-03:00

Dear Friends, I`m travelling in Chile, on the slow route home. I have many great photos yet to post so watch this space sometime after January 5th, 2007. Art and I took many photos in the Gerlache and Neumayer Passages. The day was quite different from the brilliant, cloudless day when we arrived. This one was misty and dramatic. I´ll get to it soon. DAVID

Summer Solstice - Leaving Palmer

2006-12-22T23:02:00.000-03:00

We are leaving Palmer Station today, Saturday, December 23, for our four day boat ride on the Laurence M. Gould back to Punta Arenas, Chile. A bittersweet ending, leaving this beautiful place. However, I got what I came for, which was information on how the ice looks. I feel that with the molds and so many photographs I have learned so much. Now I can go home, digest, and start to make my cast glass sculpture.

I expect to add a few postings to this blog as I dig out photos and clean them up with Photoshop. (Not to enchance them, so much as to make them more realistic than what the electronic camera thought it saw.) Hang on for a few weeks until I get home.

Thank you, everybody, for your support and comments. This has been so fun and I feel invigorated by all your compliments and questions.

Please email me at druth@glass.com

DAVID RUTH

Ice Cave

2006-12-22T13:13:00.000-03:00

On old Palmer, which is now an island, due to the retreat of the glacier, and the former site of Palmer Station, there is both an ice arch and also an ice cave. We posted pictures of the ice arch before. This time we couldn't get to it because the elephant seals had taken it over. Fifteen or more had come inside, and a few were in the cave itself.

A few weeks ago, Jeff found the entrance to the ice cave under the snow and dug it out. I had seen pictures and was eager to get back to Old Palmer but circumstances delayed us for a while.

The entrance is small and we had to crawl in. You couldn't stand up, but what a scene. The whole thing is glowing blue green ice, floor ceiling and walls. It has indented arches forming a long tunnel, maybe 20 or 24 meters. The floor was lightly frozen over some water, which I found when I sat down.

Christina is the person in charge of all the long running experiments, mostly in Terra Lab. She has been doing time-lapse studies of the environment. Last one was of the Gould leaving, in several thousand pictures. I suggested a picture of my ice sculpture melting and evaporating.

Rocks

2006-12-22T11:40:00.000-03:00

In a land without green plants the rocks become stark, the lichens vivid. Especially as the snow melts off the glacier rubble, it exposes beauty in the patterns of lichens, moss and the rocks themselves.

I have been in love with rocks for years, but here they are so prominent. In my proposal to the NSF I requested that I be allowed to cast the local rock if I decided that the it was more interesting than the ice. In the end, although I love the ice, the variety of textures is not all that great. After ten molds we had most of them. I asked and was granted persmission to spread the silicone mold material on sea-washed rocks next to the station. The resulting rubber mold is spectacular, although I didn't get to see it for long as it was snatched away to send home.

Art has the incriminating photo of me spreading the raw goop on the rocks. I felt kind of bad doing it, even with permission since this environment is so pristine, the international park, as it were. But the silicone performed like a champ and completely peeled off the rock without a trace. I spent a few minutes picking up the few pieces, but there is no remaining evidence that anyting happened there, to my relief. I had visions of spending the last two days of my stay at Palmer Station rubbing moling compound off the rocks. Fortunately that was not the case.

No post of mine from Antarctica would be complete without pictures of ice. We got the boat out and found some gorgeous pieces in Arthur Harbor. This piece was clear ice, but even underwater, you can see the facets, veils and bubbles.

One last blue ice glacier bit.

Two minutes of glorious sunset on the night before solstice at midnight. Orange light on the blue ice.

Glass Casting in Antarctica

2006-12-17T13:08:00.000-03:00

I figured out how to save the glacier! I'm going to turn it into glass. I actually managed to make a small glass sculpture in the Palmer Station lab using exactly the process I had proposed with the ice molds. Over the past few weeks, Art and I have taken several silicone molds off of ice surfaces from pieces we have found in the water around the station. I melted some paraffin wax into different silicone textures and built up a small wax model for the glass using three textures from the ice.

After embedding the wax in a dental casting plaster, I melted out the wax in a small lab bench furnace at about 200ºC.

Here is my studio on the mash and grind deck of Palmer Bio building. We put the kiln go outside so as not to smoke everyone our during the burnout process. I was worried that the weather might affect the firing temperature, but it didn't.

Here is the mold with chunks of glass I had brought from Oakland, melting at nearly 800ºC. The glass is a very light copper/cobalt blue, with about a thousandth percent colorant, very light.

Ken setting the temperature on the controller. This controller was not ideal since it wouldn't turn down slower than 1ºC per minute. I wanted the high temperature cooling to be less than half that so I babied it for several hours while it went through that critical phase.

Here is the piece when I broke it out of the mold. Notice the two textures. One was the smooth faceted ice and the other side was the snowy, granular ice. The "nose" is a third slightly wrinkly texture.

Zenobia and Kerry organized an art show in the bar at Palmer. I put in some of my ice pieces, including this tall one I have shown before in "Ice Studies."

The top photo is after an hour out of the freezer container. The second, several hours later as the sun was setting. The ice broke up internally around the crystals, which had also formed the facets. The afternoon was warm enough so the ice started to melt. It lasted just about exactly 24 hours before it tumbled to the deck.

I also put in one of the silicone molds. I wonder if anybody got it, but it represented an absence of form, absence of a sculpture, maybe the absence of the glacier. Several guys were fascinated by the silicone, since it's flexible and strong.

Above is another picture of my glass casting taken in the declining light of the day at about 11PM. Below is another of our "Ice Studies," when we were in the container with the photo lights. This one used one blue light to accentuate the clear form.

Between Breaks/Aerobatic Macrofauna - Art Quinn

2006-12-15T11:44:00.000-03:00

As you know from David's last post, my extreme age necessitates certain pauses, expecialy after slogging through the long hours demanded by a slavedriver like him! He made me get up to photograph these Chinstrap Penguins. They circled our inflatable, shooting through the water, then bursting up out of the surface. If you inspect the wave above the penguin, you will notice that the left ring is the other penguin's exit spot, the right its entry, even detailing the beak on the far right.

Here are the Chinstraps again, but underwater. In the past some of their jumps have landed them in the boats here at Palmer. They jump out immediately.

It is hard to imagine why they have evolved to breed and waddle around on land considering their expertise in the water. This is a picture of Penguin Heaven, with cloud-like snow.

Across the straits from the Penguins is Elephant Rocks. This is some mega-macro fauna. We happened to be nearby when these two got into it.

The glacier in the background photographed with a closeup through an iceberg recently calved. We got this shot from our Zodiac.

This is detail from the same berg as above, but very close. The inverted triangular piece of ice was about 15" wide at its base.

Charismatic Macrofauna

2006-12-14T22:37:00.000-03:00

The other night, an announcement went out that a rare King penguin had been sighted on Torgensen Island, just across Arthur Harbor. I had been up on the glacier videoing Mount William, but at dinner, Jeff invited me to take a boat out just before our 10PM boating limit. The King was just standing alone and he has been there for a couple of days now. No one here knows where he came from or where he is going. Obviously the colony of Adelie penguins on the island don't seem to mind. Indeed, they don't mind humans either.

Tha's the Adelies and the King, above. Just 100 meters from Torgensen is Elephant Rocks, clearly Elephant seal territory. It's rare to see a penguin there but the elephants are all over the place. Cozy, too.

This elephant seal, probably an adolescent climbed up on the rocks no more than 5 meters from the station, on the rocks that I use to fish out ice pieces. I started to go down the snow-grid path to the dock and this guy made threatening noises. From my experience with the elephant seals in Northern California, I didn't take him too seriously, but I still used a telephoto lens.

We think this is a leopard seal, because of his prominent head, even if we didn't see any spots. He was on a berg that was floating by quickly in the current and raised his head every so often presumably to see how he was being carried along.

This is the famous quinnar seal of Palmer Station in a semi-relaxed moment. Palmer has been hard work for Mr. Quinn and he takes his rest when he can.

No post of mine would be complete without a few pictures of ice. this glacier face is so fantastic, I could never get enough of seeing it. The berg probably calved from the face right there. The form is right, anyway.

Here is an actual plant; let's call it a charismatic macroflora in honor of Matt who works on plankton, here. I think this is the only plant with leaves, if you can call blades of grass, leaves. The only other greens plants I have seen are a couple of mosses. I suppose lichens are plants, too, but they don't count in the green category.

Ice Photo Studies

2006-12-11T09:47:00.000-03:00

Striped Heart

Art brought camera equipment, including his new Nikon D-200, the world's most complicated camera. We have strobe lights and a bloac backgroud. In our freezer container, now named "Davy's Locker," we have set up a photo studio. Here are some of the pictures we have made with bergie bits found out in the water and pulled into the Zodiac, or Fished off the rocks with the nets.

Rock Ice

Ice Wing

Three views of Marfa

Two views of Light Fragment

Ice Cone

I have showed pictures of this piece before. I am intrigued with its shape, in that it has deep holes or impressions in the facets that minimize its actual thickness. Unfortunately, though it refracts the light well, we have found it difficult to show the actual shape. Good thing we are doing the molds.

Curt's Camping Trip

2006-12-11T09:24:00.000-03:00

Chinstrap penguins

Our master computer tech, Curt Smith sent these pictures. He and a small group of Palmerites went camping on Jacob's Island. I thought they were crazy going out, but if you're prepared, camping at freezing temperatures and howling wind can actually be fun.

Shawn Strange

2006-12-11T09:04:00.000-03:00

Our sous chef Shawn Strange has written this entry:

The smell of turpentine reminds me of my mother.

I find it oddly familiar these fond thoughts of a toxic vapor pop
into my mind just as sitting down to gorgeous smelling and looking
Thanksgiving dinner plate. Even at the bottom of the earth, Palmer
Station, we celebrate traditional holidays, as well as create our
own. But as I sit down to the table with David Ruth and talk of
sculptures, paintings and artists circle the table, I find myself
lost in the familiar and taken back to my childhood.

At the end of each painting day, my mother, the artist, would stand
back from her easel and stare at her freshly-painted canvas,
watching it as if it would jump to life all while stirring her used
paintbrush around in a glass jar of turpentine, milky with the
smattering of her pallet colors. When she was painting, the smell of
this piney liquid would float from the jar and her studio to invade
the entire house, lying over every room like a layer of
pine-smelling dust.

As a child, I would stand beside her, watching her swirl paint
together on the pallet, blending one color into another until just
the right hue had been achieved, and then dipping her brush to
paint, shape forms that would emerge on the canvas as images.
These moments in my mother's studio were magical, watching outlines
take color, color take shape, shape evolve into patterns and images
begin to move with rhythm that sometimes swept me away or not. I
would always tell her my exact opinion, her harshest critic and
biggest fan. These moments with her, our conversations, watching her
paint are some core piece of me still.

My childhood was filled with her artist friends coming over to visit
in paint-splattered clothing, sitting at her booth during art shows,
and getting stuck staying late into the art-opening evenings,
because my mother was lost in artsy talk that bored my
twelve-year-old self stiff, the same kind of conversations that I
find I cannot do without now.

There have been a few times in my life I've found myself in
uninspiring places that were void of beauty and denuded of artistic
minds. This is not one of those times.

The landscape around Palmer Station is awe-inspiring, endlessly
white upon frozen white. Some days it's so glaringly bright that the
snow is mushy under your feet, your retinas cringe in the intensity
of the reflective light and glaciers calf like thunder.
Other days only small pockets of hazy sun make it through the foggy
gray skyline creating a charrosquurroo effect in only the shades of
white, which I would have never thought to be possible. Shadows in
the glacier are enhanced, and sunsets intensify the effect.

Four-foot crystal icicles drip down from the outer lip of the ice
arch, frozen to the cavern's edge, lacing it like a giant, surreal
white gingerbread house. Nestled deep within their arches, these
sky-blue Narnian doorways open up into glacial caves, the result of
thousands of years of snow cyclically falling, compacting, melting,
moving ever-so slightly and collapsing occasionally. The beauty of
these natural sculptures, these frozen sapphires, defy any words
that I've found thus far to describe them.

It's hard for me to not create in this environment. It's difficult
to not be inspired to capture some piece of what the naked eye can
see.

And so in watching David Ruth run around and try to lasso small
icebergs like the moon, I've felt a piece of home (minus the smell
of turpentine). I've been able to talk about form and texture and
see the ice differently through the eyes of someone trying to create
a work of art in its likeness, listening to the discussions of
process regarding fixatives, molds and freezing times. From over my
heaping plate of Thanksgiving dinner, I listen to cozy conversations
of creation being spoken from the corner room of a rectangular
building on a peninsula that juts out from this our Antarctic island
home on Anvers Island . We eat and talk and relax ourselves, our
bellies and the top button of our pants in this our slowly-thawing,
frozen world, warm with stuffing and pie.

Ice Meister

2006-12-08T09:19:00.000-03:00

Yesterday, which was Thursday, December 7, 2006, Art was feeling better so we chased after some ice. In the early morning we went out to the Arthur Harbor shore,the north side of Palmer Station and took photos of all the ice that had been left by the overnight high tide. I bagged this gem.

I set it up on the rocks and took its picture from several angles. These pieces are amazingly sculptural and have different aspects on each side.

Same piece from the opposite side revealing its layers.

A little further down the same rock ledge I found a couple more.

I love the abstraction of these shots. there is a little algae on the rock which softens the Antarctica plant-bare landscape. I've hear that below the ice zone, about 10 meters down, there are thriving plant colonies, mainly kelp.

Half this piece if below the water. See the bubbles in the ice?

Ice textures.

In the afternoon we took out a Zodiac and went ice hunting. So many wonderful pieces in the water. We dallied in Arthur Harbor picking out various pieces, including this one. I wrapped the bow line around it and we pulled it out.

Loudwater cove with Mt. William in the background.

Tonight I cut the end off this piece and stood it up in the "photography studio" we set up in the container. Next post I'll put up some of the pictures we took.

The glacier at the back of Loudwater Cove. All of Anvers Island is covered with this glacier and it is immense. Too bad it's retreating fairly rapidly. This part of the Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a 5ºC (9ºF) rise over the past 20 years. The glacier is reacting as you might expect.

Ice in Motion - Art Quinn

2006-12-07T13:10:00.000-03:00

The ice near Palmer Station is in constant motion, changing every minute. In the following pictures, I use time-lapse photography to show the live flow of the ice.

If you watch long enough, the images morph. Here I see the sky and mountains.

This image depicts a close-up of the water and ice flowing around a rock.

Here is the "satellite view" of the same inlet.

This is a magnified closeup of the ice. Reminds me of a night sky.

Detailed photo of spray on rocks.

Snowy Morning

2006-12-06T21:52:00.000-03:00

Just so you don't think the weather is always beautiful here, I shot these pictures of our snowy morning, last Monday. After the snow poured in, the wind picked up and brought a load of newly calved glacier ice from Loudwater Cove through the passage behind Old Palmer and a river of ice appeared in Arthur harbor. It quickly inundated the shore line making it easy to pick out or photograph bergie bits in the water. Then it turned the corner and closed in the boating ramp.

The River of ice turning towards us from Loudwater.

The view up Arthur harbor.

The view down Arthur Harbor

A few bits of ice had interesting form, but on the whole it was mostly balls of snowy ice. We didn't get out in the boat because of the winds, so we might have missed the bits that didn't get bashed in the surf.

I wish I could mold some of these textures, but the pieces are just too big. This one weighs tons. In a few days we are going to try to grab some bigger pieces but I just don't have the mold making resources to do anything with them. They might be study bits and maybe local sculpture. Below is a piece we captured a few days back. Art and I sawed it in half and took a mold off the battuto, or faceted, texture.

Here is the silicone mold we took off the above bit. After experimenting with the material we found we got better surfaces if we didn't use the thickener. That meant we had to completely enclose the flow of the silicone, which we did with aluminum foil. The surface of the resulting mold is perfect.

This piece of snowy ice seems to have just been for study. I still have it in the freezer. I am contemplating molding it, but I'm not sure if its the best use of the remaining material.

Meanwhile the ice had come around to the boating dock. Trying to make headway through this stuff is like making margarita mix, grinding up ice as you slowly push through. The prop is OK with the ice as long as you don't hit a big one, but they keep getting caught under the boat. You have to wiggle and shake the boat to get them out, even when trapped from the sides by more floating ice.

These penguins in the "back yard," the area of glacial rubble behind the station, were hassling some skuas who may have been trying to build a nest. The penguins kept walking up to the skuas until they flew off. Don't feel too bad for the skuas, though, Art caught one stealing a penguin egg in a shot on Torgensen Island. I'll try to get him to post it.

Some people really know how to use an iceberg. Several of these guys were hanging out by the Station. The ice was flowing pretty fast and the seals would look around every few minutes to see where they were going.

Torgensen Island

2006-12-05T10:00:00.001-03:00

Don't let the blue sky fool you. Last Friday the weather closed in and we haven't been out in a boat since. that is not to say that is isn't extremely beautiful without the sun, but it was too windy and icy to take the Zodiaces out. In the next post I'll show some of the bad weather. Art and I grabbed a Zodiac and headed out to Torgensen Island, about a kilometer form the Station. It has 4000 breeding pairs of adelie penquins with quite a few nests of skuas on patrol.

These guys watched us arrive. Our rules are that we are not allowed to cause the animals to alter their behavior in our presence. But we are allowed on half of Torgensen Island. It's very hard not to interact with the penguins and stay out of their way. They are somewhat curious, too; completely unafraid of humans.

The retreating glacier leaves the place a mess, with broken rocks and rubble everywhere. Its quite sculptural, though.

Not many plants here. You can see just about all the species in the first picture. But we have some outrageous lichens.

Lot's of telephoto work here.

Elephant seals hanging out by Elephant Rocks.

Palmer Station: glistening blue jewel.

Eastern Shore

2006-12-04T22:17:00.000-03:00

Finally, I found a way to post these pictures. I have posted them on Flickr, a Yahoo feature and the editor can transfer over the images to this posting on Blogger. It's a pain and I can't see them while I'm writing. I'm still hoping to upload the images directly form the computer, as I hhad been doing until this weekend.

On Friday, Art and I got a boat out twice in the same day. First we went east, around Bonaparte point to a shore I had only seen from on top of the glacier. The bergs were fantastic, as you can see. Very stimulating to my sculpture mind. After lunch we took the boat to Torgensen Island where we watched the skua steal eggs from the Adelies.

This is one giant berg, at least for here and now, Even though it looks like two, it is clearly connected underwater.

There was a group of Gentoo penguins. You can tell them by their red bills. One of those birds is not a penguin.

We saw this berg later in the day back at Arthur Harbor. The blue gets me every time. This is a piece of stripy ice, one of the things I didn't expect to see.

Blogger Bugs

2006-12-02T13:06:00.000-03:00

We took the boat out on Friday and got some great pictures of iceberg shapes. They are so wild and sculptural. Unfortunately, I am not able to upload any pictures now for some reason. I'm hoping that some employees of Blogger will show up and fix the problem. I've tried all the things they suggest in their help section like clearing the cache. I have tried from several different computers. It may be working for Art on his computer, so if I get desperate, I'll impersonate him and use his computer. There is no one to call,no one to receive an email.

This is not dissimilar to the problem I had when I first arrived. I sent out hundreds of emails to everyone on my list saying that I would be posting in a day or two. As it turned out it was well over a week. Blogger encouraged me to change to beta.blogger and my blog got stuck for almost a week not functioning. Finally one day it was freed and I posted all the pictures of the Gerlache and Neumayer Straights. I'm patient but we only have 18 more days here at Palmer.

Too bad, too. The weather closed in here on Saturday and it has been raining and snowy. The barometer took a dive to 965 mBars and we are in the middle of some storms coming around Antarctica from the west, plenty of time to sit at the computer and blog.

We have continued to mold the ice pieces, as well. Our technique is getting better, wrapping the berg bits with aluminum foil and locking them in place with some water left to freeze at the bottom. It provides a stable base to work on and keeps any molding silicone from leaking out the bottom. This also eliminates the need to use the thickener which has left voids and bubbles on our surfaces.

We had another cruise ship today, the Sarpik Ittuk, registered in Denmark. The tourists are fine for us; we can ignore them. But for the employees of Palmer Station it can be a chore. They provide tours and refreshments, even if the tourists don't get to see much. They are not allowed in our labs or work spaces or rooms. Palmer policy limites the numbers of tours to two per week. Antarctica is so popular a destination that sometimes there are more than that.

I'll keep working on getting the photos posted. Hopefully they will be up soon. Thank you, everyone, for your continued support and enthusiasm.

DAVID RUTH

Way Down Under - Art Quinn

2006-12-02T11:18:00.000-03:00

Nature as Art, Art as Nature, Geo/Animal Contrasts.

Color/Form, Daggers/Puff

Turquoise and Jade - No that's Ice!

Serene/Severe

Fluff/Rough Intimate/Infinte

The Intrepid Sculptor, will he create this in glass?

Glacier Walk

2006-11-29T12:44:00.000-03:00

Last night I walked to the top of the glacier behind Palmer Station. The view at the top was incredible. This is certainly the most beautiful place I have ever been. In one sense, being at the top reminded me of being on the coast in Mendocino, with the bluffs made of ice rather than stone and trees. You could hear the surf playing up and down the coast. It was the only sound at the top. This is the view to the south southeast. These mountains extend out from Cape Renard, a thumb of land sticking out of the Antarctica Peninsula.

To the east is Mt. William, 1200 or 1300 meters high.

The trail is marked with black flags and signs.

Cape Renard extending past the visible tip of Anvers Island. This is the view over the back side of the Station:

On the way down you get a good view of our glacier:

Most of the way down you can hear two sounds. One is water trickling beneath your feet and the snow. It's the glacier melting at its edge. The other is occasional crashes of ice. At the station you think the crashes are aways ice falling into the water, but when you see how far back the erosion extends, it's obvious that the noise mostly comes form internal rearrangement of the ice as it flows towards Arthur Harbor.

The view of Palmer Station from half way up the glacier:

Our Island paradise. This is the view of the islands we can boat to. On a sunny day like this its hard to imagine the weather can get so fierce that you would be able to get home from the closest rock.

This Adelie welcomed me home.

Then this morning we were visited by two crab-eating seals. This one has been lounging on this iceberg all day.

This chinstrap penguin is curious about what is going on in our refrigerator container.

Ice Studies Two

2006-11-27T15:19:00.000-03:00

The mission here is to capture the textures of the ice, both photographically and also with molding material in order to recreate those textures back home in the studio, using the lost wax process to cast textured shapes into glass sculpture . This is an incredible ice sculpture that I fished out of Arthur Harbor a few days ago. There is a picture of me carrying it across the rocks in my post "Ice Chaser". Art may have taken a better picture of this which I will post later.

This morning we had a photo session. Soon Art will figure out how to use his fancy new Nikon 200. This camera is so complicated that it takes a computer genius to figure it out. Meanwhile my little Canon has done a heroic job. I'm hoping that eventually we figure out a way to increase the contrast of the ice surfaces to get more depth and definition of the texture. I need as precise and accurate a record as possible to recreate them in the studio. If they white out in the photos, I'll never have a record of how intricate those surfaces could be?

I found this one lying on the north side of Gamage Point yesterday. I knocked its head off and stood it up on the rocks:
After dinner I went out and it was still there. I noticed that over the six or so hours the ice had smoothed over and the texture had diminished emphasizing the form.

In the middle of the photos session I looked down off the pier to see this texture.

We experimented with different silicone / catalyst / thickener ratios.

It is summer here. The temperature has varied in the past week between about -5ºC and +5ºC. This morning is was drizzling or snowing depending on which window you looked out of. But this afternoon the sun came out so we took a zodiac out to Old Palmer, about one Km away. It was a dazzling ride. By this evening it was snowing again. Art at the helm:

On the way out we encountered this piece of bar ice with its typical battuto texture. Since it had snowed earlier the top was frosty.

Ice bergs typically have 80% or more of their mass in the water.

I caught this shot of the underwater battuto refracting the light through the surface ripples. The water was especially clear today, and very blue.

This bird was guarding our boat at Old Palmer.

Landing on Old Palmer near the cache. We have a two mile boating radius here There are about five caches including tents, radios, and food on the various island and points. Hard to think that the weather gets so severe here that you couldn't get back 1 kilometer to the station. November is supposed to be the snowiest month, even if summer, but we have hardly seen it. Ben told us about being here in October, a few weeks ago, when the sleet was blowing 70 knots. You needed goggles just to go outside. He said it was like riding a motorcycle on the freeway during a snow storm just to walk outside!

You can see the foundations of the old Palmer Station from about 35 years ago.

We walked across this saddle on our way to the ice bridge:

This cave was unbelievable! First, there is the characteristic "battuto" texture on the walls and ceiling of the cave, only large than we have seen in clear ice in the water.

It was dripping and muddy, plus icicles were falling as we watched. We didn't go inside.

Looking up at the ceiling, which was glowing from sun penetration through the ice.

On the way back Mount Williams, in the middle of Anvers Island broke through the clouds for a while.

Suddenly there were icebergs we hadn't seen going in.

I expected to see a Polar Bear sitting there!

But this guy growled at us passing by.

Penguin, Dolphins and comments

2006-11-26T17:04:00.000-03:00

Please look again at my posts for the Gerlache Passage and the Neumayer Passage. I added several great shots to each post. I can hardly convey the beauty of those parts of the trip.
No trip to Antarctica would be complete without the penguinos. I admit they are cute, very funny birds who do mimic humans in some of their behavior. I tried to post an AVI moving image file form my camera. It showed this penguin hopping over rocks to the water, looking around, belly flopping in and jetting away underwater. They can really move underwater. Unfortunately, I can't post it here.
This Adelie came over to watch me videoing the glacier and was very curious. Then he turned and scrambled down to the water and dove away. We'll go our to Torgensen Island for more shots later.
WARMING In response to some of the comments: I understand that is area of the Antarctica Peninsula has experienced more warming than any other part of the world, perhaps 5ºC (9ºF) in the past 20 years. Our glacier is retreating a a frightening rate. Bob Farrel, our station manager says, in response to a question about the future in the Antarctica Sun, asked, "You had a glacier?"

It is a giant pile of snow and it has retreated over 120 meters in 20 years (500 feet) from the back of Palmer Station. That's a lot of water to add to the oceans if you multiply it by all the snow and glaciers on this peninsula.

These are birds we saw on the Gould in the middle of the Drake Passage from Chile. We were never without birds along side, even when over 1000km (700 miles) from land.

I believe these are Commerson's Dolphins. Very entertaining as we were leaving the waters of Tierra del Fuego. Beautiful and very fast. These guys would dive under the boat and surf the bow wave. The photos are thanks to Frank Howell or Raytheon.

Weather Room

2006-11-26T09:54:00.000-03:00

Today I wanted to write about our weather room. This little place, Palmer Station, is a hub of communications and monitoring equipment. In another post I will show some of the scientific experiments that are being monitored here, from the magnetosphere to the seismograph.

But first I just have to show these two pictures of our sunset last night. Although it never gets dark here, the sun goes down at about almost 11PM. It rises at 3:15AM (We are on Chilean Daylight Time, three hours behind London GMT.) Yesterday evening the sun and colors just went wild.

Here are our tide tables:

This one shows the salinity of the water. I'm not sure about the units. The water is rather more fresh than out in the open ocean. I had observed on the Gould as we were crossing the Drake that the salinity was close to 33 as opposed to 20's here.

Maybe we are in for some weather. The barometer is dropping slowly.

Yesterday's air temperature almost made if up to freezing.

I think that curly, stormy looking thing is headed our way.

The summary for the continent:
The weather room.
With all the monitors.

Thanksgiving on Ice

2006-11-25T11:54:00.000-03:00

Thanksgiving was postponed a day at Palmer Station due to the arrival of the National Geographic cruise ship, the Endeavor. Yesterday (Friday) was gray all day until we sat down for dinner at about 6PM. The sun came out and the glacier was illuminated, going through color changes every minute or two. I think the sun helped the ice to calve form the face and last night we saw a pile of new brash ice in the far corner of Arthur harbor. This early morning has a very low spike tide (-3feet) that drew the ice out into the ocean. then the incoming tide and the wind drove it back, all broken up and shaped into sculptures.

The glacier was brilliantly illuminated in the morning.

Compared to last night at about 9PM.

I had been focusing on a part of the glacier slightly to the north. I has the best detail and blue caverns and cracks. But yesterday the most active part was further south, in our cove. In this picture you can see some big blocks about ready to come down. Last night the ice filled up the cove and was spread out all over by this morning.

The view out over Arthur Harbor from the Station.

The ice today was different. More like compressed snow with a lot less drink ice, the clear bits that were exciting me before. I love the transparency and the battuto texture of the clear, but this stuff has wonderful organic forms. the change fast, too, as they float along, get washed by the waves and erode.

This one washed up on the north side of the point. Just as I photographed it the head broke off and the piece turned over. I waded out on the rocks and snagged the head, although some parts of it broke off before I could get it into our refrigerator container.

This stuff got caught on the South side, right by our water outfall. Probably not advisable to mold it, even if the textures are so good.

Meanwhile, our cooks had prepared a fabulous meal. Here is sous-chef extraordinaire, Shawn with Ben who also baked some pies. These people even baked two low sugar pies for me, a pumpkin and a mixed berry pie. Mmmm good! And left-over pie for breakfast, too.

Our intrepid leader, Bob Farrell, the station manager giving a toast.

My plate at dinner included half an artichoke, a lamb chop, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, roll and fresh fruit salad.

Ice Study One

2006-11-24T10:17:00.000-03:00

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.

Battuto in Ice

2006-11-22T10:14:00.000-03:00

Almost immediately upon arriving at Palmer, I noticed something. Much of the ice that has been floating in the water is textured with an indented pattern, much like glass that has been carved in the battuto technique. This is an Italian technique where the glass is faceted on a vertical grinding wheel to make semi-regular patterns that can break up the light or condense it. It can have a lovely effect in glass and is no less delightful in ice. the size of the pattern in ice may be related to how big the overall piece is. I have seen giant bergs with huge sized patterns and small piece with facets about 1 cm (½") across.The pattern is a unifying feature on ice that has distinct interior patterns.
Around here, the clear is is called drink ice because they fetch it in to break up to put in drinks. It's dense and doesn't melt too fast.
Look at this delicious berg and its two parts, white and clear. Both have wild textures, but the clear ice is exquisitely patterned with "battuto." The white ice is also interesting. Much of it seems like it is melted together rubble from fracturing and falling bits. The combination of the two areas looks like two different substances, but they are both cold.

The optics of the "battuto" as it goes underwater is also interesting. The highlights or ridges of the patterned facets can be highlighted in light or dark, leaving the rest of the clear ice invisible. I've seen, but haven't yet gotten a photo, the delicate lighting of those edges as they move away underwater as a patterned highlight only leaving the rest of the ice invisible.

Ice Chaser

2006-11-22T09:36:00.000-03:00

Our mission as described to the National Science Foundation in the application for the grant to Artists and Writers was to take molds off the ice textures to bring home to the studio to recreate as glass sculpture.

The first thing we needed to do in our quest was to get some ice. Out in the Zodiac on boating 1 and 2, we took pictures. Later Tracy, the lab supervisor, issued us fish nets so we could fish out pieces from the shore. Yesterday Art and I took out a Zodiac so we could survey the ice ourselves . I grabbed a few chunks and we have started molding them to test our system.Right off the dock in the first few minutes of being here, I made significant observations. For one, the layers of snow and ice compacted make for a lively internal structure, one of the most significant aspects of my regular studio work. I have seen how the interior layering can be enhanced by the water-shaped textures of the floating ice.

Just one little piece of throw-away brash ice and so much to look at. notice the layers of bubbles complemented by the "battuto" texture on the surface. battuto is an Italian technique of grinding facets into the side of glass to get away from the shiny round surface of blown work, or to camouflage the surface of castings. Here it has its natural correspondence in nature.
This knobby texture is a good one.

This ice just keeps on coming. The blue is quite mysterious. It is not present in smaller pieces suggesting that it is very weak in blueness. The water here has a blue-green cast, but this turquoise is not the same as that.
Got one! Good thing this isn't glass, I'd really be struggling. There is no dock at Palmer for the Zodiacs. I had to carry this piece of ice across the wet rocks to our nearby refrigerator container. Glass weighs about twice as much as ice.
On the other hand, I wish I could put these in the gallery!
Here is our first attempt at molding with the Polytek Tin-Sil, which failed because I forgot the catalyst!
Zee and Art in our studio. I think I'll call it "1135 south", since it's just as far away from our lab as my second studio is at home. The container is refrigerated to -3.5ºC (25ºF). It has proven perfect to keep our ice samples from either melting or getting covered with condensate and changing after we pull them out of the water.
However 1135 North was never like this. Right across Arthur Harbor is Torgensen Island. There are 4000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins. They come over and visit and we see them on the rocks or bergs. When we had the boat out, we cruised close enough to see their colony.

Looking at Palmer Station

2006-11-22T09:25:00.000-03:00

We arrived at Palmer Station on a spectacular day last week, Thursday, November 16th, shortly before Noon. There was not a cloud in the sky. The Palmer staff was waiting for us at shore. we heard later that they unloaded the Gould at a record pace.
Palmer station is a community of 45 people. they are mostly support staff for the National Science Foundation projects that occur here. As a National Science grantee, I have found everyone eager and ready to provide any item or service that could possibly make our time more productive. Great meals are provided by the kitchen staff. The lab supervisors have made space available, including our refrigerator container where we are preserving the ice for molding.Palmer take safety extremely seriously. Here is the OSAR (Ocean Search and Rescue) team on a drill. All over the station there are suits, so these people can jump into a "float"=coat," required for boating in frigid waters, and be ready to go off on a rescue. In a climate where the sea water is below the freezing temperature of fresh water, speed is of the utmost importance.
I have wanted to give Bill Sistek an idea of how Palmer has evolved. He was a lab assistant here twenty-five years ago. I sure that the facility has become much more complex and involved since his tenure. In a future post I'll talk about some of the ongoing experiments here, as well as the perceived changes in the glacier and surrounding land forms. Suffice to say that the glacier has retreated more than 130 meters (500 feet) since his time. Even some of the people who have been coming here for more than five years, say that they notice big changes, including new passages opened in the harbor and new islands created.
The back side of "Bio," looking up towards "GWR." The green tanks are for biology, the black one is a "Hydro-therapy" tank. I'm sure to get a picture of some of us in it!

This is a picture looking up the point towards the glacier on the Arthur harbor side of the station. the ice cleared out the next day and has been present, but sparse. The glacier is continuously calving. We hear the loud crashes, see the waves and new pieces of ice appear.

The other side of the Palmer Station point at where the glacier starts.

My first attempt at chasing pieces of ice.

At some point I'll do a photo study of the glacier. It looks different in all different lights, so a collection would be interesting. When we arrived there were tall spires of the left side of the "fluffy" part. During our orientation, it was back lit to emphasize the blue transparency. I wish I had stopped and shot it, but other pictures will have to do. The whole thing is kind of unreal; something you might make out of whipped cream and a drop of food color. The glacier is one hell of a pile of snow!
The view on Friday looking back towards the glacier across Arthur harbor. Notice the ice in the water has been blown away.

Palmer is about boating. Art and I got our Boating 1 and 2 completed and took a boat out yesterday to capture some ice chunks. Driving the Zodiac through the brash ice is like mixing margaritas!

Neumayer Passage and Arrival at Palmer

2006-11-21T20:57:00.000-03:00

Turning into the Neumayer Passage marked the dive into the ice. The Gerlache was snowy, but this was ice everywhere. The Neumayer was more intimate, too. The mountains, hills, rocks were much closer. The boat pilots had to dodge the big icebergs and motor slowly through the small ones for fear of clogging up the engine cooling intakes.

I was thrilled. Never have I seen landscape so beautiful. I suppose the complete lack of plants accounts for part of the starkness. I didn't know where to look, big picture or small.

I'm in love with ice. For the glass artist, nature is throwing away piles of sculptures, just casting them off like nothing! I have learned so much about the structure, form, interior, and texture in just a few days. I must admit, though, that the blue color of the ice is more mysterious than ever.

And finally. A starboard turn around Anvers Island and we arrive at Arthur harbor and Palmer Station in brilliant sun. From the pictures and the description it seemed like a lonely outpost of 45 souls. But even though its way away from all other civilization, this is a bustling city of 45 people, with everything to support research and make the inhabitants happy.

Art Quinn and I are very happy to be here.

The Gerlache Passage

2006-11-21T20:30:00.000-03:00

At 3:30 AM on November 16th, having trouble sleeping, I peaked out the porthole and saw we had arrived in the Gerlache Passage. Werner had told me that this was one thing he hoped to see in Antarctica, having heard that it was one of the most spectacular spots in the world. I couldn't agree more.

Since it never gets dark here, I could easily make out the mountains and rocks of the Antarctic Peninsula. It turned out to be an absolutely splendid, sunny morning. I got out the cameras and started snapping. The picture was so intense, I don't think I've ever beheld an earthly site so fine.

As we came out of the Drake passage we encountered some rough weather, and then some snow around the South Shetland Islands.

At 4:30 or 5AM the sun started bathing the tips of the Western side of the passage with the glow of dawn.
With the sun fully up the scene was quite vivid, almost unbelievably so. We saw an avalanche as we passed, but I wasn't quick enough to catch much of the dust cloud.

I set the video camera on deck and just let it run for three hours almost until we pulled in to Palmer.

People started getting up in the early morning.

Icebergs at dawn on the Gerlache.

Leaving Cape Sherriff.

Gould Engine Room

2006-11-20T10:52:00.000-03:00

We got a tour of the engine room from Mike, one of the ship's engineers. Other than being noisy, this was a beautiful sight. Every thing was so clean. All the systems were painted with colors separating out their functions. It was so clean it felt like you could eat off the floor.

This is the air intake for one of the Catapiller 6-cylander engines. Below is the engine itself.

Two parallel engines turn each propellor. They are constant speed, about 900 RPM and fueled by diesel.

This is the transmission that reduces the speed of the shaft from 900 rpm to 250 rpm, the speed of the propellors. The props have a variable pitch arrangement like many airplanes so power can be added by digging into the water by changing the pitch.

I believe this is the fire pumping system.

This is the starboard hind corner of the boats's hull form the inside. I liked this shot becasue of the composition, not that it shows the mechanics of the operation. You can see the heavily reinforced beams for dealing with Antarctic ice.

These motors provide the hydraulic power for turning the rudders, and probably adjusting the propellor pitch, too.

This is the rudder turning mechanism. The rudders stick down directly below two of these servo-motors. Most of the control of the boat is done by computer. Watching the pilot steer is mostly him adjusting the computers. Except, of course, around the ice or docking.

More on the Laurence M. Gould

2006-11-20T10:38:00.000-03:00

David Ruth on deck.
The Gould, although of a slightly ungainly shape, is clean and beautifully painted. The equipment is all is perfect running order and she is so clean you could eat off the engine room floor.

I always thought these enclosed lifeboat looked scary, but they are roomy inside with seats along the perimeter for 44 persons. They leave the heat on at all times so an escape from the ship wouldn't be too painful. One of the two boat has a radio beacon. They are self-righting, so you have to be strapped in. Supplies of food are for about three days and there is enough fuel to go about 120 miles. Not too far in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.

Navagational chart. You can see our route on the tape as we pass Deception Island.

Every day the Chileans fax a weather map.

Our first view of Antarctica was at Cape Shirreff, as we tried to land Gitta McDonald for her study of Southern elephant seals. The winds and seas were too high to let her off and she has ended up at Palmer until the Gould returns to try again.

The Laurence M. Gould

2006-11-20T08:31:00.000-03:00

The National Science Foundation research vessel, the Laurence M. Gould

On Thursday November 16th, Art Quinn and David Ruth boarded the National Science Foundation research vessel, the LM Gould. She is a 230-foot, 48-foot beam and something like 1000 tons. The bottom is round and the boat has a tall structure making for some rolling motion as she glides over the Southern Ocean. However, we were lucky to have good weather and easily survived. Indeed the only bad weather encountered was when we tried to land one of the scientists at Cape Shireff on Livingston Island, one of the South Shetland Islands. It was blowing 40 knots or more with 10 to 12-foot seas, too dangerous to put someone in a Zodiac and land on a windswept beach.

Joe at the "wheel." Most of the steering was by computer.

This is the ship's environment computer. It is saying that we are at 60º south latitude and 62º west longitude. Our bearing is 162º, nearly due south. Wind is 14 knots from the north, water temperature is -0.282ºC, slightly below freezing for fresh water. Outside temperature is 1.7ºC, about 35ºF. Wind chill is -10.8ºC. The water depth was 4138 meters, well over 12,000 feet deep and the barometer was at 970 millibars, steadily declining.

Here we are in the ship's lounge after"muster." We all were required to bring our survival suits and life preservers. I'm not sure how we would really survive a disaster, however. After leaving the coast of South America we only saw one boat. Antarctica is really remote.

Captain Marty at the controls.

Mates Scott, Joe and bosun, Ernest.

The University of California at Santa Cruz was well represented onboard. On the ship's bridge from the left, David Ruth, Porter College '73, Gitta McDonald College Eight '99 and presently a PhD candidate in biology at UCSC, Stian Alesandrini, Stevenson BA '95 and MS '97. On the right is Art Quinn, Porter College '72. Go Slugs!

National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program

2006-10-23T16:07:00.000-03:00

Arthur Harbor, Anvers Island, Antarctica

2006-09-27T20:56:00.000-03:00

Palmer Station is located on the extreme right portion of this panoramic view of Arthur Harbor. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Palmer Station Antarctica

2006-09-27T19:39:00.000-03:00

Our home base for operations will be the National Science Foundation facility at Arthur Harbor on Anvers Island named "Palmer Station". To visit the Palmer Station website, navigate to: http://pal.lternet.edu

DR and Light Marker Group

2006-09-25T02:08:00.000-03:00

These glass sculptures are made of Pyrex, a borosilicate glass. My project in Antarctica is to gain understanding of ice and its relationship to glass. With the assistance of Art Quinn, I will be gathering ice textures and photographs in order to birng them home and translate into icebergs of glass.

Antarctica Journey Begins

2006-09-24T21:52:00.000-03:00