The Arctic circle RESIDENCY

In June of 2024 I participated in The Arctic Circle residency expedition. Myself, 27 other artists, four guides, and eight crew spent two weeks traveling aboard the tall-ship Antigua along the west coast of the Svalbard archipelago, within the Arctic Circle north of Norway. We motored and sailed along the coast, in and out of fjords, and out towards the open ocean. We made it as far north 80°20 north and walked on the polar pack ice. The sun never set, as we were there for summer solstice. It was a singular experience that I never could have expected and will never be able to repeat. I took photos, took notes, and tried to absorb as much of the arctic environment and the residency experience as I could. I was too busy trying to observe everything I possibly could that I didn’t make any art during the expedition, but upon returning home I start to put shape to ideas that I had jotted down into my sketchbook over the two week. Over the next six months I completed the following collection of four artists books, all inspired by the remarkable experience and what I learned there. With these projects I was able to play with new mediums, forms, and styles that I had never tried before, so they all felt like they were part of a giant experiment. The results of this experimentation and these projects is four books that hopefully convey some small part of the curiosity, joy, grief, and overwhelming awe that I experienced in the arctic.

RETREAT

Retreat is the first project inspired my experience as a participant of The Arctic Circle summer 2024 residency expedition. The project consists of a stereoscopic viewer/slip case and a book of stereoscopic images taken during the residency. The project is an exploration of glacial and sea ice retreat data paired with the simple yet visceral qualities of stereoscopic 3D photos.

The book is a ring bound collection of eight stereoscopic images, each framed in sheets of dyed acrylic. Each page can removed from the ring binding and placed in the stereoscopic viewer to view the images in 3D. The front of each page shows dual images of ice in various forms and states, all taken near different glaciers (or in one case on the pack ice) on the western coast of Svalbard. On the reverse of each page is a map showing historical glacial and ice extent data for each location featured in the images, beginning in 1936 and continuing up to 2023. The data for these maps was gathered from the Norwegian Polar Institute, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and imagery collected by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite. These maps show the devastating retreat of Svalbard’s glaciers and the polar ice cap’s seasonal sea ice over the last nearly 100 years.

The book pages, binding, and the viewer/slipcase are all made from acrylic, dyed with frosty blue tones to mimic the colors of the arctic ice. The viewer consists of two boxes: an outer box that houses the two lenses that the stereoscopes are viewed through, and an inner box where the book is stored and where individual pages can be placed for 3D viewing. The inner box can be slid back and forth in the outer box so that the person using the viewer can focus the image, and the acrylic lets in enough light to make the images viewable. I designed the box by first testing the design out of paper, and then I moved on to laser cutting more iterations out of cardboard, wood, and finally the final pieces out of acrylic.

Images of glaciers calving have become visual and emotional shorthand for the climate devastation we are causing and experiencing. But the impact of such imagery can be dulled when seen so many times, and being in the arctic and seeing the glaciers in person - as well as seeing evidence of how far they used to reach and how much they have retreated - brings life back into these images. One reason for my curiosity about stereoscopes is that such a simple method - two slightly staggered images, some distance, and some lenses - can create a very vivid 3D effect. I’ve found stereoscopes add an experiential quality to images that is sometimes even stronger than a video of the same scene. A 3D photo can really make you feel like you have shared in viewing a scene as it was in the moment, there on the ground (or on the water, as the case may be). One goal of this project was that those who get to view the book and its images in 3D are given a little extra visual sense of what it was like to experience the arctic. And when paired with the maps that accompany the image they can get a little extra emotional sense of the experience as well, and be reminded how dire our climate situation is.

 

ARCTIC FLIPBOOK TRIPTYCH

The Arctic Flipbook Triptych was a project I had loosely envisioned before heading to Svalbard. The idea morphed over the course of the trip and continued to change when I got home, but the general concept always remained the same: A shallow case with three flipbooks embedded in it that will form a complete image with the image built into the case. The many videos I took of the sea ice we traveled through on the Antigua ended up being the perfect images to use for the flipbooks - they perfectly captured a moment of the arctic experience and had wonderfully fluid movement to them. The idea of creating flipbooks was almost an experiment with time, as I wanted to use the very quick, momentary medium of the flipbook to bring the viewer into a snapshot moment from my trip.

I printed the flipbooks using riso-printing to get the rich blue color, and to add a texture to the images that makes them feel a bit like choppy film from an expedition during the peak of polar exploration. Two of the books are just printed with blue ink, and one is printed with both black and blue. Because flipbooks are essentially an animation put into book form I was able to scan the images back in a digital form and create animations of them as well. The case is made from laser-cut cast acrylic in opaque white and two shades of translucent blue, which is stacked in the interior of the case to create a 3-D sea ice effect that flows into the covers of the flipbooks. The slots that house the books each have a ribbon attached so as to easily pop the books out. Similarly to the ox-and-plow book style I used for “Glacier Rocks,” flipbooks are a book form that encourage play. They were also a type of book that I had never made before, so I had a lot of fun making them and hope that people have fun playing with them as well.

LICHENS OF SVALBARD

Lichens of Svalbard was inspired by the incredible diversity of lichens I saw growing across the Svalbard archipelago in my short time there. The lichens are a vibrant and distinct sign of life, in what can seem like a barren place from a distance. Their forms are intricate, delicate, and beautiful and immediately captured my attention and imagination. I took hundreds of photos of them not knowing what variety many of them were, and went about trying to identify them and learn more about lichens when I returned home. The Lichens of Svalbard sculptural accordion book allowed me to get to know these six lichen varieties in more detail and spend time studying their structures.

I sculpted each lichen out of oven-bake polymer clay, in some cases using wire for an armature or added detail. I then painted them with acrylic paint and then sealed them to give them slightly different finishes and textures. On the top of each box the lichen are labeled with their English common name, Latin name, and the scale that I sculpted them at. I designed the cases that hold the lichen digitally, and then cut them out of cast acrylic using a laser cutter. I wanted the exterior of the folded up book to be stark and white so that the vibrant and detailed lichen really stand out when the book is opened.

In my many years spent outside getting to know places and finding inspiration in nature, I have learned that the biggest most dramatic environments are still made up of small things. Lichen are one of those small, often overlooked things that make an ecosystem and location what it is. With this book I wanted to learn more about the lichens of the arctic for myself, but also perhaps make people consider lichens more. Maybe next time they visit an expansive, breathtaking vista and experience the enormity of a natural landscape they will take a moment to look for the small lichens, too.

Glacier Rocks

Glacier Rocks is a 36 page, riso-printed ox-and-plow style book showcasing images of rocks emerging from glacial ice and seasonal snow on Svalbard. The book can be experienced page by page or by folding it out flat into an approximately three foot by three foot square, which I think of as a “rock quilt.” The book is housed in a laser-cut case made of cast acrylic with real rocks (from my local beach) embedded in either side.

When hiking across glaciers during my residency I started to notice rocks of various sizes embedded in the glacial ice, some in beautiful little pools of water with strange veils of ice hanging over them. It felt like finding little jewels embedded in the glacier and I started taking photos of them as a means of collecting them. I also loved seeing rocks emerging from the melting snow, a halo of space around them where the snow had melted back, leaving the rocks looking like a puzzle piece fitting into place. When I returned home I realized I had many, many photos of these rocks and I wanted to do something with them. The idea of an ox and plow book that folds out flat and allows you to look at an expanse of rocks under your feet felt like the perfect form to mimic my own experience of spotting the rocks. I had just started to learn about riso-printing a few months earlier and it seemed like the perfect process to give the images depth, life, and a slightly surreal quality. The book was printed in two colors - black and blue - to give the images the cold, icy look of their environs but to keep the starkness of the dark rocks against the white snow and ice as well. I designed the case to give the book a solid sense of weight and presence, and also to give it a safe place to be housed. The rocks embedded in the exterior of the box are intended to reflect the rock images inside and give the case an extra tactile quality.

I love ox-and-plow books, and really any book with an elaborate fold, because it brings out a sense of play in the viewer. The person handling the book is kept on their toes as they try to keep up with how the book unfolds, and they can’t passively flip through it as easily as with a more traditionally bound book. I wanted this book to have that sense of play as a way to bring out a sense of discovery, as the reader gets to discover the rocks as they go, just like I did.

An alternate version of Glacier Rocks was included in the Small Expressions juried gallery exhibition at the Northwind Art Jeanette Best Gallery in Port Townsend, Washington and was awarded the “Juror’s Choice Award.”