I’ll be drawing on Shackleton’s and Scott’s huts for key content and composition cues. I’m particularly focused on Shackleton’s repurposed venesta cases in keeping with the project’s recycling theme. The wood cases found second lives as shelves, book cases, box storage, work surfaces, and partitioning. Not to mention book covers, which led me here in the first place. Expect such shapes and elements in my upcoming sketches and in the final wood assemblages too.

I’ve gotten word that the material I collected and shipped from Antarctica is at Port Hueneme on its way to San Francisco, so it won’t be long before it arrives. I’ll introduce the items as I unpack them, and will document their eventual incorporation into the artwork.

In the meanwhile, I’m formulating ideas for my compositions in a sketchbook I started recently. I’ll post pages here throughout the project to show their role in the process. The entries will be out of page order (that’s how I work on them) and in various stages of progress. The book will serve as a means of exploring shapes, colors, textures, and line; a place to work out the technical aspects of construction; a lab for spontaneous experimentation, for trying out found objects for size, and for re-working sketches and concepts to perfection… or to ruin. It’s a testing ground.