Walking in Antarctica

by Helen Glazer

Canada Glacier from Lake Fryxell. Sculpture of a section of the Canada Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys derived from 162 source photos taken on site fairly close to the face. The photos were processed into a 3D file that I edited in 3D modeling software and carved on a CNC (computer-controlled) router. I hand finished and hand painted it. One of the source photos hangs on the wall behind the sculpture. This is one of five sculptures of Antarctic ice and rock formations I have completed.

Cloudburst, Erebus Ice Tongue Cave, Antarctica. Crystals hang from an interior ceiling just inside the cave entrance. The Erebus ice tongue is the end of a glacier that extends onto the sea ice on McMurdo Sound. A small opening in the tongue leads to an ice cave containing unusual and fragile ice crystal structures Just inside the entrance, the ceiling had a blue glow, illuminated by sunlight filtering through the ice.

Fractal Arch, Erebus Ice Tongue Cave, Antarctica. Deep inside the cave it is pitch dark. I backlit these features with a lamp we brought inside.

Pressure Ridge Beneath the Double Curtain Glacier. The Baroque-looking sea ice pressure ridges along McMurdo Sound below the Double Curtain Glacier are seldom visited, as they are only accessible by an hour-long trip via snowmobile from the small New Harbor field camp.

"Skua," Lake Hoare, Antarctica. A thin layer of ice etched with a delicate design resembling the profile of a skua, the only bird occasionally seen in the Dry Valleys. One of many such small-scale designs I photographed that had formed on top of sediment blown onto the permanently frozen surface of Lake Hoare.

"Seated Figure" Ventifact, Dry Valleys, Antarctica. A group of ventifacts — boulders eroded by the fierce winds and the freeze-thaw cycle into strange shapes. This grouping resembles a Modernist sculpture of a seated figure and a large head from this vantage point.

Ice Palace, Lake Hoare, Antarctica. Walking on the permanently frozen surface of Lake Hoare, I found labyrinths of low ice structures supported by icicles, standing about two to three feet high. They are formed when the ice surface turns from solid directly to gas in the cold temperatures and are further shaped by complex freeze-thaw cycles. I knelt down to photograph the intricate "architecture."

"Bird" Ventifact, Dry Valleys, Antarctica. At the top of the steep, gravel-covered hill above Lake Bonney in the McMurdo Dry Valleys is a plateau strewn with ventifacts, giant boulders eroded into strange shapes by freeze/thaw cycles and fierce winds. This is a sculpture made from 3D-scanning the rock.

Penguin Subcolonies, Cape Royds, Antarctica. Adélie penguins nest in groups called subcolonies, like this one. What look like walls left by an ancient civilization are natural volcanic formations. The tan color is, as one researcher put it to me, "10,000 years of penguin poop." The boards are probably remnants left behind by British explorers in Ernest Shackleton's expedition in the 1910s. There are no organisms to decompose wood in Antarctica so it just weathers. Everything outdoors that the explorers left behind, even broken bottles or bones from their meals, is deliberately left untouched.

An immersive, interdisciplinary project bringing together photography, sculpture, and audio narrative. Walking in Antarctica takes the viewer on a journey through an extraordinary environment that few people ever visit — over frozen lakes, around towering glaciers and baroque sea ice formations, into a magnificent frozen ice cave, across fields of surreal boulders, and through a penguin colony.

The photographs and sculpture are inspired and informed by my experiences as a grantee of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. I returned from Antarctica with a rich cache of raw material, creating the archival pigment prints, sculpture and an accompanying narrative. Walking in Antarctica, a solo exhibition selected from this material, premiered in 2017 at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, and is available for rental in the U.S. through 2027 through ExhibitsUSA, the traveling exhibition rental service of the Mid-Atlantic Arts Alliance.

The images surprise visitors with vivid depictions of richly articulated and colorful environments that counter the common perception of a bleak, white wasteland. The sculptures offer an opportunity to experience the unique polar ice and rock formations from different vantage points as objects in space and are the first, and thus far only, such sculptural works of the Antarctic landscape.

For the last two months of 2015, I worked out of remote Antarctic scientific field camps and had access to protected areas that can only be entered with government permits or in the company of a skilled mountaineer. Insights from my research and interactions with scientists enhanced her experience of nature during her residency. I returned with some 5,000 photographs and recorded my experiences in an online journal. I received funds to produce the Walking in Antarctica exhibition from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance Rubys Awards, funded by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and from the Puffin Foundation, Teaneck, NJ.

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