McMurdo Station is Antarctica’s largest human settlement and the first permanent American scientific research base on the continent.

Established in 1955, ‘Mactown’ sits at the southern shore of Ross Island, the solid ground farthest south that is accessible by ship. It’s operated by the United States Antarctic Program under the National Science Foundation, and houses over 1,000 summer residents and about 150 in winter.

Research performed at and near McMurdo includes aeronomy and astrophysics, biology and medicine, geology and geophysics, glaciology and glacial geology, and the study of ocean and climate systems.

This collage, the second in my series on Antarctic stations, focuses on McMurdo’s role in high-altitude scientific research.

Since 1989, NASA and the NSF have launched large unmanned helium balloons and their instruments from a site near here. Owing to unique atmosphere circulation over the continent during the austral summer, the balloons are often recoverable weeks later in nearly the same spot.

During my stay at McMurdo last January, the NASA-NSF partnership successfully launched a newly designed super-pressure balloon prototype that achieved altitudes of over 111,000 feet — three to four times higher than passenger planes fly. The balloon’s material was unique: an advanced lightweight polyethylene film about as thick as ordinary plastic food wrap.

With further developments to craft size, durability and functionality, the team hopes to eventually hoist a one-ton instrument to the brink of space for 100 days or more. Long duration balloon missions at such heights cost considerably less than satellites, and their scientific apparatus are retrievable and re-launchable, providing sustainable high altitude research platforms.

Balloon flights are used to to make atmospheric studies, to investigate the nature of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, to search for anti-matter, and to make scientific observations in fields such as hard x-ray/gamma-ray and infra-red astronomy. Floated radio telescopes search for indirect evidence of extremely high-energy neutrino particles possibly coming from outside our Milky Way galaxy, while other experiments measure high energy cosmic-ray particles originating from distant supernova explosions within our galaxy.

McMurdo’s next super-pressure balloon launch is an international collaboration involving mostly French and American scientists. Scheduled for August, the Concordiasi project will put as many as 18 balloons in the atmosphere at about 20 kilometers altitude. Their instruments will take meteorological and atmospheric readings in relation to the ice surface and study the processes of ozone depletion over Antarctica.

In addition to my collage’s balloon imagery, the artwork references Building 155 described in an early dispatch. Also included are the station’s acronym MCM and Robert Falcon Scott whose Discovery expedition hut of 1901-04 stands in view of McMurdo Station today.

I created the artwork with found paper and printed matter and contributed the piece to Scott Massey’s recycling-inspired RRR Project. Look for his new print publication RRR.002 and related exhibitions soon.

Currently, 29 of 48 Antarctic Treaty member nations operate research stations on the continent and its nearby islands. Some bases are permanent, some are temporary; some operate year-round and others in summer only. Their programs, capabilities and designs differ, and each lends itself uniquely to international scientific collaboration. I’ll be featuring a variety of these facilities in upcoming posts and artwork, starting with Japan’s Syowa Station:

Syowa (also known as Showa) is located on East Ongul Island in Eastern Antarctica. It is the largest Antarctic science research facility run by the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) in Tokyo.

Syowa was established in 1957 and is home to NIPR’s Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE). The base uses solar power and its research activities include upper atmosphere physics, meteorology, seismology, gravimetry, geodesy and cartography, oceanography, glaciology, geology, geography, terrestrial and marine biology, and medical research.

NIPR and the U.S. Antarctic Program collaborate regularly with a focus on the geosciences and environment. An example is cooperative high-altitude scientific balloon launches at Syowa and Amundsen-Scott Station. By pooling resources and sharing data over Earth observation networks, Japan and the U.S. help each other while allowing worldwide access to information about climate change.

My collage’s chief elements are bits of printed matter I found in Tokyo. The hands are vintage sci-fi, which is how I imagine Japan’s 1957 foray into Antarctica — their first — to have felt. The hands also suggest prosthetic solutions in case of extreme frostbite.

The artwork was contributed to Scott Massey’s RRR Project featuring art made with and about recycling. His new print publication RRR.002 is in the works as well as an exhibition or two. I’m glad to be part of it!

Who discovered Antarctica? Any number of early pioneers are credited, depending on how their accounts are interpreted. Here are the all-time top candidates:

The first reported sighting was by Russian Imperial Navy officer Fabian Gottlieb (Thaddeus) von Bellingshausen while commanding the second Russian expedition to circumnavigate the globe. Bellingshausen recorded seeing “ice mountains” on January 28, 1820 in the vicinity of what is now known to be the East Antarctic coastline. However his journals don’t mention that it may be land, and his expedition charts don’t indicate any land.

Two days later in the continent’s northwestern quadrant, British navy captain Edward Bransfield sighted the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland, named it Trinity Peninsula, and produced the first recorded Antarctic land chart.

The next sighting of the continent was by American sealer Nathaniel Palmer in November 1820 — yet neither he, Bransfield, nor Bellingshausen were first to set foot on the continent. That distinction is claimed by American sealer John Davis who allegedly made the first landing on February 7, 1821 on the Antarctic peninsula’s west coast.

While these early pioneers certainly speculated on having encountered a significant land mass (John Davis’s logbook entry reads: “I think this Southern Land to be a Continent”), the first person to actually know he’d discovered a whole continent was United States Navy commander Charles Wilkes. In 1839-40 Wilkes’ expedition sailed along the edge of the ice pack south of Australia for some 1,500 miles, confirming the existence “of an Antarctic continent west of the Balleny Islands.”

This image depicts Bellingshausen, winner on the timeline if not for best evidence. He’s aboard his flagship, a 600-ton corvette named the VOSTOK (meaning “East”) after which the Russian research station and fascinating subglacial lake are named. The letters VOSTOK are incorporated into the piece and the graphic element on the right edge is Bellingshausen’s stylized Russian initials ФФБ.

The artwork was created with cut paper and graphite and is currently in MOVE, a group show curated by Rich Jacobs at Space 1026 in Philadelphia.

The Long View Project’s first print edition, previewed in progress some posts ago, is now complete. It’s titled “21-Step Grey Water Treatment System,” issued as four pochoir stencil prints, each on a different color of paper.

As I mentioned back in the Dry Valleys, grey water is a term for waste water resulting
from washing, cooking, and similar activities. Grey water contains cooking fats, oils, and soap and detergent residues which Antarctic stations manage along with human waste (’black water’) in accordance with the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (a.k.a. the Madrid Protocol) in efforts to minimize human impact on the environment. Releasing untreated waste water containing microorganisms into active ecosystems is particularly concerning since some pathogens can remain viable in low-temperature Antarctic conditions for extended periods, providing them the potential to occupy local habitats and infect native bird, mammal, and marine populations. You’ll find representations of this bacteria lurking in my artwork below.

While all of Antarctica’s 82 research stations (operated by 28 nations) presumably meet the Protocol’s minimum requirements for waste water management, their methods vary widely. Stations’ capabilities depend on their size, accessibility, longevity, and local weather and geography among other factors. Large coastal stations such as McMurdo are likely to have established plants using mechanical, biological, and disinfection processes, while most U.S. field camps’ sewage is removed from the continent altogether, while inland bases such as the U.S.’s Amundsen-Scott and Russia’s Vostok dispose of untreated human waste in deep ice pits.

This artwork imagines a future with advanced waste water treatment technology in place at all Antarctic research stations. The imagery is inspired by plant schematics and a 2005 Swedish survey of 71 stations to identify optimum grey water cleaning techniques in the context of Antarctica’s challenging conditions.

The “21-Step Grey Water Treatment System” edition was made by a hand-printed process called pochoir which employs stencils in creating imagery. I used gesso and matte acrylic as the medium, and Japanese ’surikome bake’ rubbing brushes to apply the paint. Each of the four prints measure roughly 24″
x 18″ and are embellished with graphite line work.

Print #3, shown here, is currently on exhibit along with “The AA Five” in REFRAME: Making Sense of Waste at ARC Gallery, San Francisco through May 30.

From curator Hanna Regev’s press release:

“‘Reframe’ is a teachable moment and reflexive show that calls for individual responsibility, an examination of the waste around us, and questioning our consumption behaviors. While viewing the exhibit, we ask that you think of ways to harness the insatiable appetite for goods that drive the demand of ever-increasing products. As consumers and viewers, think of what you contribute to environmental degradation and your consumption habits.”

Featured artists are Michael Bartalos, David Broom, Alejandra Chaverri, Gregangelo Herrera, Wolfgang Ganter, Rebecca Goldfarb, James Goode, Beth Grossman, Avi Hoen, Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Jose Ramon Lerma, Liz Mamorsky, and Noah Wilson. Music will be performed by James Goode on instruments created from recycled materials.

“Long View Study #9 (The AA Five)” is the latest study for my Long View Project series whose theme is waste management and recycling in Antarctica.

“AA” refers to Aurora Australis whose covers were fashioned from wooden provision cases in 1908 to create the first book edition ever published in Antarctica. “Five” refers to the five major figures behind this effort: Ernest Shackleton who edited the edition, illustrator George Marsten, printers Frank Wild and Ernest Joyce, and Bernard Day who bound the books. AA’s production marks an early instance of recycling on the continent and exemplifies the resourcefulness and creativity inherent to Antarctic scientific and artistic endeavors today.

The imagery draws from my 2009 visit to Shackleton’s hut where the edition was created over winter a century earlier. Shackleton devised the project to ensure that “the spectre know as ‘polar ennui’ never made its appearance,” as he put it.

I’m using found wood, paper, wire, hardware, and a leaf to reference the explorers’ workspace environment, their team efforts, and their fondness for tobacco. References to their fondness for whiskey to follow in future artworks.

The piece measures 7″ wide x 12″ high and is currently on exhibit in REFRAME: Making Sense of Waste at ARC Gallery in San Francisco through May 30.

Spring greetings from San Francisco! I’m back from abroad and excited to see my Extreme Mammals graphics on display at the museum and its retail spaces. Enjoy the EM show and my images, up through September 12.

In Long View Project news: I have three new Antarctic-related works to share this week. Today’s featured piece is “LV Study No. 8 (Plan 1),” inspired by Lake Vostok, a body of water situated 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath Russia’s Vostok Station at the center of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. This largest of Antarctica’s subglacial lakes was revealed by airborne ice-penetrating radar imagery in 1973, and preliminary ice-core drilling suggests that its depths harbor microbes that evolved uniquely to survive the most oxygen-rich natural lake environment on Earth.

The challenge to scientists is not in reaching these depths, but in probing the lake without contaminating its ecosystems. Presently, ice core drills are stopped 100 meters (300 feet) short of reaching liquid water to prevent the apparatus’s anti-freeze compound of freon and aviation fuel from tainting it. Russian scientists are reportedly devising a solution to safely access the water by next year.

I’ve referenced Lake Vostok in previous artworks, but the environmental issues related to the research are particularly relevant to the Long View Project. I’m curious to learn about the technology being developed for this specific mission; its eventual implementation; its ultimate dependability. Will it be fabulously successful in the long term, or might supposed safeguards fail with disastrous consequences? (And who isn’t asking such questions in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster?)

My artwork, subtitled Plan 1 (план 1), imagines the inception of the Vostok exploration project by Russian researchers. This schematic would have served to indicate their position relative to the recently-discovered lake beneath their station. Depth (глубина) and active life forms are speculated upon, and a lake bed research base is proposed. Exact coordinates and reliability of mail service yet unknown (неизвестный).

I’m fascinated by the notion of science fiction eventually giving way to science fact, and I enjoy following exploratory endeavors as technology progresses. Perhaps that’s why I find the Lake Vostok project continually engaging and return to it for inspiration and perspec-
tive time and again.

Long View Study No. 8 (Plan 1) measures 8.25″ x 10.25″ and was created with cut found paper, graphite, and a Russian postage stamp. The piece will be on view and available at Space Odyssey: Southern Exposure’s Annual Fundraiser and Art Auction this Saturday evening, May 6 at SoEx, 3030 20th Street in San Francisco. Hope to see you there!

I’m participating in an Antarctic art panel with fellow Antarctic artists Cheryl E. Leonard and Lisa K. Blatt tonight at The Lab in San Francisco. The presentation is part of the thirteenth annual Activating The Medium festival featuring two nights of performances from local and international sound artists.

Cheryl E. Leonard at Palmer Station.

Each year, the festival is curated around a specific theme that underscores connections between artists working with various methods and materials. This year’s theme is ice and its physical, geographic, metaphoric, and mythological attributes as manifested through sound and image.

Michael Bartalos at South Pole Station.

The program kicks off at 8:30 PM with Cheryl, Lisa and I each giving a short audiovisual presentation about our Antarctic projects and experiences on the Ice. We’ll follow that up with discussing topics concerning art in Antarctica and answering audience questions.

Lisa K. Blatt at McMurdo Station.

The festival’s featured sound artists are G*Park (Switzerland), Pedestrian Deposit (Los Angeles), Joshua Churchill (San Francisco), Adam Sonderberg (Berkeley), Rale (Los Angeles), Jesse Burson (Alameda) and Cheryl E. Leonard (San Francisco).

Join us! The Lab is at 2948 16th Street, San Francisco CA 9410.
415.864.8855 | http://www.thelab.org

More information on The Lab’s event page.

I’ve created a motion sequence from my Long View sketchbook pages for Super Short Video!, an exhibition of 5 second long videos opening at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn on Wednesday, February 24th, 8-11pm.

The show’s filmmakers and artists include David Ahuja, Jon Audarson, Michael Bartalos, Spencer Bewle, Rob Bindler, Adam Calvert, Matt Campbell, Manuel Dilone, Paul Eng, Rob Erickson, Jenny Figaroa, Greg Hill, John Hobbs, Guido Jiménez Cruz, Philip Kelly, Raina Kumra, Todd Lamb, Ruth Mamaril, Anthony Marinelli, Ted McGrath, Bill Moulton, Christian Svanes Kolding, Russ Stark, Takako, and David Art Wales.

There will be drinks and music, and videos will be shown throughout the space on four projectors. Sounds like fun and if you go, be sure to say hi to my talented designer friend John Tymkiw who conceived and curated the program.

For those who can’t make the show (like myself), the video collection will eventually be posted to supershortvideo.com. (I’ll post my piece here then too).

Secret Project Robot is at 210 Kent Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211.
Tel. 917.860.8282.
Directions, hours, and info at secretprojectrobot.org.

The Long View Project is retrenching this month with some exciting new works in the pipeline. I’m most recently working on the project’s first print edition, using a stenciling process called pochoir.

Pochoir is an ancient printmaking technique that attained great popularity in the early 20th century among artists and designers to produce bold designs and patterns in vibrant colors. It requires no printing press and allows for variation in texture, opacity, and color between prints since the medium is applied by hand. Its manual aspect however is time- and labor-intensive, especially with layered and large pochoirs such as these (roughly 24″
x 18″), which accounts for my run of just four copies this time around. Still, I’m making the most of it by printing each on a different colored paper, slightly varying the placement of the stencils, and embellishing each with graphite for a certain degree of uniqueness.

More information about the tools, paints, and concept behind these prints will follow upon the edition’s completion in a week or two. In the meanwhile, stay tuned for more Long View Project news in the next couple days.

Greetings Long View followers, it’s been a spell since my last post and an update is long overdue. Despite recent travels and various commitments, the Long View project is alive and well and continues to take shape with new sketches, studies, and progress on the string of final art panels. I’m working on freeing up the panels’ compositions and the ‘flow’ between them by linking the series in freeform fashion with rope, wire and various projectiles in addition to the hinges I’d originally proposed. Expect photos and a return to more regular and frequent postings on my return to the studio after the holidays.

In the meanwhile, I want to extend a big thanks to all those who attended my Long View talk at the Calacademy’s NightLife event. It was great fun to do and I got a lot of positive feedback from the audience. Special appreciation to Rhonda Rubinstein, Cat Aboudara, and Gary Sharlow for facilitating my presentation.

In other Calacademy news, I’m currently creating the graphics for the Extreme Mammals exhibit slated to open on April 3. The show arrives from New York City’s American Museum of Natural History which I had the pleasure of visiting today. The exhibit delivers on its promise of The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time, providing great material to illustrate. The graphics will be stylistically consistent with those I previously created for the Calacademy and will again be featured on apparel and merchandise throughout the museum’s three retail stores.

Happy holidays to all!