Arts and Entertainment

Art on ice: Contest created by UAF scientist will display works in Fairbanks and Antarctica

Next December, an art exhibit will be set up outdoors near a remote research site on the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. Video showing the art as displayed against the endless white landscape will be made available online as a "virtual gallery."

But before then, Alaskans will have a chance to view the exhibit -- the first-ever Antarctic Art Contest -- during Arctic Science Summit Week taking place at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in March.

The contest and the unconventional venue are the brainchild of Erin Pettit, a veteran Antarctic research scientist and associate professor of geosciences at UAF. Shortly before leaving Fairbanks for what is either her 13th or 14th trip to the southern continent, Pettit spoke about the connection between science and art. People often consider the two to be opposites, she said, but both "work on the edge of society's comfort zone."

"I use art to teach science," she said.

Ice geek

Originally trained as an engineer, Pettit talks excitedly about the mechanical features of ice, how one can read the information contained in it, how the construction of different layers can tell you what the temperature was when the snow that formed it fell thousands of years ago, the ways technology can pry secrets from frozen water. Her voice rises with enthusiasm when she describes the vast iciness of Antarctica.

"I'm an ice geek," she said.

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Pettit's work takes her to different locations on the world's coldest continent, but the spot that inspired the upcoming art show is on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide.

During the Antarctic summer season (North America's winter) a crew of 20-30 works in a smattering of Quonset hut-style buildings set in the middle of a geographic region roughly three times the size of Alaska. Situated 1,000 miles north of the South Pole and 1,500 miles east of the biggest Antarctic facility, McMurdo Station, it's not the most remote spot on the continent, but it's certainly among the loneliest places where humans live.

Researchers have been working at this site since 2002, drilling down 2 miles through the ice to take an extensive core sample that gives scientists a look at what was happening 68,000 years ago.

Pettit was with the first team to arrive, responsible for picking the site where the drill would go down.

"We went out with a tent and a snowmachine and started collecting data," she said. "For 14 hours a day, my job was to push a button on a GPS receiver, go to a different spot and do it again, over and over."

The Divide -- so named because the ice flows in two directions, as water flows at continental divides -- was selected because the ice was particularly deep and stable.

Pettit has often sat out downtimes when she was stuck at a site with little science to do. There have been times planes couldn't fly, stranding her for a week.

"I actually appreciate those times," she said. "Not having an Internet connection or a lot going on. It's an opportunity to be present and notice all the details of what's going on around you."

On such days, she's been known to fill the hours by doing a kind of environmental art of her own. "I would try to stomp out a perfect spiral in the snow," she said.

Crazy idea

"The contest started as just a little bit of a crazy idea," Pettit said. "I wanted to stimulate new ideas connected to our research."

The "crazy idea" actually originated not from her Antarctic research, but rather from a wilderness education project for youths in Alaska and Washington.

"I have a couple of artists I've worked with in my Girls on Ice program," Pettit said. "I've developed an understanding of how art and science have a lot of similarities. Science pushes the boundaries of knowledge. Art pushes the boundaries of beauty and communication of feelings."

Girls on Ice is free for girls 16-18. Participants explore ice fields in Washington and Alaska, learning how glaciers work, doing experiments and camping out.

Though others now conduct the expeditions, Pettit is the one who started the program 15 years ago. "It's kinda my baby," she said. "I wanted to inspire girls to think about their world in a different way. I wanted to share what I felt the first time I went on the ice."

She recounted how she became an ice geek while living in Seattle. "A friend invited me to climb Mount Rainier. I was in my early 20s and had been looking at it all my life, but never set foot on it.

"The first night, sleeping on the glacier, was a powerful night for me. I could feel I was sleeping on something moving and changing, rumpling, crackling. It totally brought to life what a glacier was for me. I made a visceral connection."

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A call for submissions to the Antarctic Art Contest went out a year and a half ago. A group of artists and scientists reviewed the submissions and announced their decision early this year.

Winners were selected in five divisions, and the final choices showed a wide range of media, from a watercolor painting to an electronic installation. Two honorable mentions went to Alaskans, both in the Community Division. Pauline Thomas was honored for a collage and the team of Sandy Winfree, Robert Winfree and Ruth Kalarek were included for a quilt titled "A World of Change."

The winner of the Community Division was an Australian, Lucy East. She created a 23-foot-long cyanotype print (sun print) on rice paper, intended to represent the depth of the core sample, which is actually 500 times longer than the rice paper. The name of the piece is "Lose Sight of the Shore."

Francois Quevillon, a Canadian artist with a significant international reputation, won the Professional Division with a video installation titled "Defrost." The work shows thermal changes on three separate screens accompanied by a soundtrack played over six speakers.

The contest was for bragging rights only. "Nobody got any money," Pettit said.

Back to the Divide

It should be relatively easy to install "Defrost" inside the University of Alaska Museum of the North. The exhibit of 15 pieces will open there on March 11 in conjunction with the Arctic Sciences Summit Week.

But how will it work at McMurdo Station, where it will be briefly exhibited in December, or out on the ice at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide, where it will be set up outdoors?

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"We can take an extension cord and put it out away from the camp," Pettit explained. "We're going to be projecting it onto an ultra-wide video monitor, not a screen. Four feet wide, 20 inches tall. I think it's modestly sized enough."

The static art will be fixed to easels, then photographed and videographed against the "dramatic white flatness of the landscape," she said. "We'll create a virtual version of it and put it up as a website gallery."

"We won't leave them up in bad weather," she added.

After showing the 15 pieces in Antarctica, Pettit hopes to take it to the National Science Foundation building in Washington, D.C. Those plans are still being made.

In the meantime, she has more non-art work to do at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet core hole. The bottom was reached in 2011, she said, and the project still has a couple of years to go. The same hole, 5 or 6 inches in diameter, has been used for several seasons. Workers fill it with a kind-to-the-environment antifreeze to keep it open.

Pettit's specific task is to thread instruments down the 2-mile-long hole. "We can go in and very accurately measure the geometry and get a sense of the creeping of the big ice sheet," she said.

The ice sheet moves much more slowly than Alaska's tidewater glaciers. But it does move.

"Some of my colleagues measure the brightness of the walls; they can see dust layers. Some measure temperatures. I measure the speed of sound through the ice," she said. The speed tells her the orientation of the crystals, which correlates to climate history.

The core hole crew has nicknames for most of the devices they use, she said. Her sound-measuring tool, lowered on a long cable with a winch, is called "The Snake." But they don't have a name for the hole itself. It is slowly deforming as the ice sheet evolves and will eventually shut.

"My team will probably be one of the last to access it," she said. "I was there at the beginning and I'm coming back in at the end."

When the core hole project shuts down, she'll be off to other projects, some involving art, some involving science, some involving both.

"The National Science Foundation sends artists and writers to Antarctica every year," Pettit said. "Sometimes we'll incorporate an artist in the field team if we feel they can contribute to telling the story of what we're doing. In fact, I'm submitting one proposal where I'll have an artist with us in the field."

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"A part-time artist," she clarified. "They'll also be working as a field assistant."

THE ANTARCTIC ART CONTEST will be on display at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, opening on March 11 and remain on display through Aug. 31. The opening coincides with Arctic Science Summit Week, an international convention of Arctic researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, March 12-18.

ARCTIC PERSPECTIVES, a second art show featuring work inspired by the Arctic, will also be displayed in conjunction with the convention, March 12-17 in the art gallery of UAF's Fine Arts Complex. A reception will take place at 5 p.m. March 14.

GIRLS ON ICE is taking applications for its next sessions. Participants will travel on glaciers, learn about the alpine world and design their own experiments. The deadline to apply is 9 a.m. Jan. 29. Apply online at girlsonice.org/apply.

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham has been a reporter and editor at the ADN since 1994, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print.

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