Day 3: Hamnodden

Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Clearing skies, around 30ºF

I awoke around 6:30 again. Coffee, Some time on the deck. Then, we ate breakfast in Ymerbukta where we had a landing the previous day and suited up to help raise the sails to move south to Bellsund.

The captain started the engines, and we turned back out to Isfjorden and headed west - out to sea. Once we got out of the fjord, however, there wasn’t any wind so the engines stayed on. We sailed most of the day and arrived at Hamnodden (in Bellsund) around 5:00pm for a shore excursion.

I felt like I was settling in to the pace of the ship and the routine of each day: Climb the steep steps from the cabins to the lounge for coffee, Get a glimpse of the morning on deck while still in my pajamas. Breakfast. Gather to hear the initial plans for the day. Race back down the steep steps to the cabins to suit up in winter gear. Climb back up the stairs. Lace up the boots. Tug on the overshoes over the boots. Don’t forget the life jacket #5 and to sign out on the clipboard before getting in the zodiac.

The Antigua anchored at Hamnodden.

We anchored near a thin L-shaped strip of land that housed a drying rack for seal pelts. On an adjacent piece of land sat a tiny trapper hut. The sun was setting to the left of Antigua, and it illuminated the mountains a salmon-pink pale-orange. I found a spine bone of a seal and a broken (but mostly still intact) clam or oyster. There was a bit of trash on the beach where we boarded the zodiac, so someone went back to the boat for a bag (almost human-sized) so we could bring it back with us.

Drying racks are used to keep pelts out of reach of polar bears.

Some small mosses dotted the rocks here that were larger than any other plant life we’d seen so far. Red moss with flowers and various colors of lichens splashed across the ground. How could they withstand such a harsh environment? Plant life here seems so improbable.

Lichen and moss at Hamnodden.

We came back to Antigua for dinner, and I was happy to be feeling well - not seasick, not stuffy with a cold. Just happy. A spread of pumpkin soup, chicken, rice pilaf, and a legendary chocolate terrine made me realize that I’m really starting to love chef Piet’s cooking. And, I really don’t think I’m the only one who starts thinking about lunch and dinner way before it’s time to eat.

After dinner, I had a conversation with one of the other artists and a guide about art, dance, and Svalbard. With all of the excitement each day in what we see, it is easy for me to forget that not only are the surroundings endlessly inspiring, so are the other 38 people aboard the ship (27 artists and 11 crew).

I shuffled off to bed shortly after. Each night so far, I’ve flopped into bed early and slept hard through the night. The combination of overwhelming scenery, exploring throughout the day, and cold temperatures makes me exhausted in the best of ways.

But, I can’t figure out yet how a landscape that is almost solely a combination of rock, ice, and water - and that is nearly completely silent - can be so overstimulating. I think this duality has led me here.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

Day 2: Ymerbukta

Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Calm and overcast with some peeks of sun, 28ºF

Last night we arrived in Ymerbukta. I don’t remember a whole lot about that since I was pretty seasick. But, I do remember that our guide Sarah knocked on our cabin doors around 10:00pm to see Northern Lights. So, we popped out of bed, grabbed our coats, and went on deck. A big green streak danced above our heads and whipped in a delicate wave.

This morning, I got up around 6:30am or so for coffee and to go out on deck. To my joy (I’m sure that everyone else had already realized it), we were anchored right in front of a glacier! I ping-ponged around the deck of the ship squealing a little with excitement, looking out at the glacier, and taking pictures of this unknown-to-me landscape.

We ate our first breakfast on the ship and listened to instructions for our first hiking excursion. The group split based on two options- one was a short hike along the shore to the face of the glacier and one was a slightly longer hike to see the glacier from above and to the side.

I took the longer option. We walked up and over a rocky, lumpy ridge that was dotted with tiny frozen mosses. The sky, cloaked in a uniform grey cloud-cover, flattened the light and made judging distances challenging.

Hiking towards the glacier Esmarkbreen (on the left) at Ymerbukta.

We hiked up and over one bumpy, snowy ridge that expanded our view back towards the ship and forward into the glacier and valley. We descended the backside of the hill next to the glacier and listened in silence for a few moments to a stream of water flowing out from the ice.

My mind raced as we sat. “What is this place that we’re now immersed in, of seemingly endless water, ice, and rock? How did I get to come here? How can I stay? Quiet, mind. The sound of this water is heavenly.” The sun started to peak from the clouds and added shadows to the drama of it all.

Nemo.

After our break in silence, we walked along the line between ice and land and followed the edge of the glacier back to the fjord. What surprised me was how dirty the glacier was. From all of the photos I’ve seen of glacial ice, it seems dazzling white, blue, and teal — and … clear. Or some form of pure frozen water. But here, where the glacier meets the land, evidence of its movement can be seen with the volume of earth it carries embedded within it. Boulders, rocks, sand, and mud are ground up and transported beneath the glacier as it moves.

I stepped toward the ice and the rocks it suspended. Placed my bare hand on its face. And I leaned in to try to hear it.

The leading edge of Esmarkbreen.

After a few more moments, we kept walking to get back down to the water. Chunks of ice on the beach - jewels illuminated by the sun low on the horizon (even though it was only just after noon). I picked up a shard of ice a couple of inches long and held it in my hand.

Glacial ice.

It’s just ice. Like so much other ice I’ve seen. Right? But, when was this ice formed? What was its path to being held in my hand at this moment? How do these bubbles form? And, how is it that it can taste so salty? It’s just ice.

I felt compelled to put the ice back on the beach to leave it how I found it, and I walked on towards the zodiac and back onto the ship.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

Day 1: Boarding Tall Ship Antigua

Monday, October 1, 2018
Overcast and windy in the morning with clearing skies in the afternoon/evening, 14º F

This past weekend was filled with trips into Longyearbyen from Coal Miner’s Cabins. Mary Ellen, Patricia, and I met the artist in residence at Galleri Svalbard - a painter from Seattle named Elizabeth Bourne. She was painting using pigment containing coal from the old mine. She had been the artist-in-residence for September, so she was getting ready to leave and head home.

We also met an artist friend of Patricia’s - a jeweler named Marina. She lives and has her studio in a tiny house near the water. She invited us in to sit around the table where she makes her work. She offered us coffee or tea as we chatted amongst her various tools, raw materials, pieces of incomplete silver jewelry, paperwork, and scattered miniature zip-locks that held shining pieces of silver rings, earrings and pendants. We chatted for a little while, then walked down to the water to look. Mountains encircled us all the way around. The fjord is massive, so the horizon is lined with what looks like small snow-crusted peaks into the distance. Here, the distance is deceiving.

We walked back across town to Coal Miner’s for a rest, then dinner at Huset in the bistro. (Huset is the northern-most Michelin-star restaurant.)

The next morning Mary Ellen, Patricia, Isaac, and I had breakfast together at Coal Miner’s, and we were eager to meet the rest of our comrades who would be on the ship with us in just s few hours. We decided to walk down into town again to pick up a couple of things - stamps, postcards, maps. It was colder and windy - maybe 14º F or so. So out of excitement and necessity we walked at a faster pace.

There are only three Norwegian Air flights that fly into Svalbard each week directly from Oslo. A few of us that were already staying in Longyearbyen had been on the Thursday afternoon flight. The very next commercial Norwegian flight arrives on Sunday afternoons. That flight held most of the other people we would spend the next several weeks with - including the captain and some of Antigua’s crew.

At 4pm, everyone met at Coal Miner’s for introductions and the first set of instructions from our guides, then we gathered again for dinner at 7pm. I was impressed by every person I met that night, but had no idea what was to come in the next couple of weeks. Back in my room by 10pm, I packed and got ready to board the boat the next day. I stayed up until midnight to see if we could see the Northern Lights (aurora borealis), but no luck - it was too cloudy.

The next day, we all ate breakfast at Coal Miner’s. More introductions. Last minute errands to town. And, back to Coal Miner’s to board the bus that shuttled down to the ship at 1:30pm. We spilled out of the bus at the pier in Longyearbyen, and our first glimpse of Tall Ship Antigua was impressive. Four masts, a blue hull, a proper wheel house, and a mast of square sails. Our home for the next fifteen days.

On Antigua, we settled into our cabins and came back up to the lounge for some coffee and tea - and to await more instructions from the captain. The crew and our four guides introduced themselves to us. Sarah, the head guide, gave us additional instructions about how to behave on the ship and how the daily excursions work. The captain, Mario, talked about other protocols and emergency procedures. So, we listened to this new way of operating and then set sail some time later.

We pulled out of port with the engines sometime before 6:00pm, and once there was some wind, we set a couple of the sails - the mainsail, the main staysail, and the fore staysail. The sunset was exquisite - one of the best I’ve ever seen. The horizon glowing a warm yellowish-peach with a gradient leading upwards of green through every shade of blue. And a towering slash across the sky with pink, salmon, and lavender clouds. Because of the size of the fjord, despite the surrounding mountains we could see the sky almost all of the way to the horizon.

At 7:00pm, we came in for dinner, and a couple of people were having trouble with seasickness. I thought I was okay until I sat down to eat.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

Arriving in Svalbard

Sunday, September 30, 2018
Mostly clear skies and currently 14ºF with a high of 22ºF

Sitting in my room in the Coal Miners’ Cabins in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. It’s about 7:30am. I’ve been hanging out here with Mary Ellen (a composer also living in Minneapolis, and we plan to collaborate on some kind of work as a result of this trip) and Patricia (a Dutch Canadian photographer/installation artist currently living in Scottland) for the past two days.

On the way here, I took a red-eye flight and arrived in Reykjavik on Thursday morning. I met Mary Ellen at the Blue Lagoon at 8:00am right after my plane landed - a great start to this trip. We walked around old town Reykjavik in the afternoon, had dinner at a traditional Icelandic place, then went to bed early. I woke up at 1:30am to some loud music coming from a car outside my guesthouse window. I couldn’t get back to sleep. The city seems super safe, so I went on a walk around 2:30am or so. and I came back to my room around 3:30am. Just enough time to repack, meet Mary Ellen for an early breakfast at 4:00am, and catch our shuttle back to the airport at 4:30am.

We flew to Oslo, took a shuttle to our next hotel, and walked a quarter of a mile to an adjacent hotel for some dinner. I found myself feeling a little scratchy. That night that feeling got much worse, and I awoke with a fever and stabbing pain in my throat. I could barely get myself to function in the morning, but I tried to keep it together since we were traveling. My mind felt scrambled. In security at the Oslo airport, Mary Ellen and I both had our bags searched, which left us a little frazzled. I lost my new fleece - either in the security check or on the plane. I don’t have any recollection since my mind was too fuzzy.

But shortly after, we arrived in Svalbard - gorgeous, mysterious Svalbard. From the air, the island of Spitsbergen looked like it consisted only of rocky, whipped-cream mountains. The plane landed in Longyearbyen and did a U-turn to come back to the terminal with only one gate. We deplaned on the tarmac. All passengers can take a bus directly to their hotel or into town. So we did that and stayed where I sit now: Coal Miners’ Cabins.

When we got to the check-in desk at Coal Miners’, which is also the bar and where you order for the restaurant, we met two other people on the trip: Isaac (a muralist from Phoenix) and Patricia. We sat and drank a beer, then settled into our rooms.

It didn’t matter that I was feeling crummy, this place is exhilarating. I live in Minnesota - a place with cold winters, snow, and lots of public land to enjoy. But Svalbard is something entirely different. The archipelago of Svalbard is made up of seemingly endless mountains and fjords, and it is situated at about the midpoint between Norway and the North Pole. According to wikipedia, seven national parks and 23 nature reserves protect its fragile natural land, and about 60% of it is blanketed by glaciers.

After resting for just a short while in our rooms, it was time to get out and see some of Longyearbyen, Mary Ellen, Patricia, and I walked into town, which is about a half-hour walk from Coal Miners’) to find an outfitter - for a couple of different reasons, including so that I could find a replacement for my fleece that I’d left in Oslo. I think we each wanted to explore a bit.

We walked down the main road (none of the streets in Longyearbyen are actually named) to Sportscenteret. There was a gal working there who was wearing Steger Mukluks. Mukluks are made a couple of hours north of where I live in Minnesota, so this place instantly felt just a bit closer to home. She said that shipping from Minnesota to Longyearbyen is so expensive, but they are the best winter footwear. So, each year the people in Longyearbyen arrange a mass order to save on shipping costs. (I’d happily volunteer to fly over with the next shipment!)

I bought the fleece that I needed, and we walked to a couple of the other outfitters in town. Afterwards, we had a delicious traditional meal at a restaurant called Kroa and then came back to Coal Miners’ for the night.

Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago with islands ranging 74° to 81° north latitude

Generally, I love exploring new cities, but exploring Longyearbyen is an entirely different kind of excitement. It feels like it’s on the edge of the earth - a last outpost before a seemingly endless sea towards the north pole. There’s a possibility of polar bears. Generally, being in town is safe, but it is illegal to walk outside of the city limits without a rifle for polar bear protection. The weather seems like it gets harsh. But, it had just snowed when we arrived, so everything looks fresh and magical.

Flying into Svalbard and walking around this town wedged between mountains gives me a similar feeling to what I’ve had before while exploring the remote locations - like in Utah around Moab/Arches National Park and in Botswana. The landscape is unforgiving and massive, and it’s hard to grasp just how small we are in comparison.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

First thoughts after returning from the Arctic

I traveled to the Arctic to research the skies, atmosphere - to see first hand and how it’s changing with climate change. At passport control in Oslo on the way through the airport, the agent asked me if I was going there to watch the ice melt. Foolishly, I said yes and parroted something about climate change. Doesn’t everyone know that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet? I think he actually rolled his eyes at my response.

The truth is, over the last few weeks, what I saw was a breathtaking pristine landscape. Snow came earlier than normal this year, so when I arrived it was blanketed in perfect white. While on the ship we saw dozens of glaciers - larger-than-life scenes of ultramarine, teal, cobalt, and indigo. Daytime skies appeared rarely brighter than dusk, so pinks, peaches, apricots, periwinkles, and violets ruled the sky. The first week was dotted with days of more fresh snow, allowing us to see recent tracks made by polar bears, arctic foxes, reindeer, and ptarmigans. 

When we headed back south again towards Longyearbyen, the weather had gotten warmer and the snow started to melt. Only then could we see traces of human carelessness. On one hike, we saw the skull of a reindeer that had gotten entangled with a large fishing net. The nets get caught in reindeer antlers, then the reindeer struggle to get free. Only making this worse, this reindeer eventually tired out and starved to death. On another hike, we saw a rocky beach peppered with garbage. Rusty paint can, five-gallon bucket, rope, plastic pieces, bags, and glass.

What I learned is a lesson in the pace of time. It may be impossible to actually visualize most of the effects of climate change within a window of a couple of weeks. How arrogant of me to think I’d see it otherwise. The agent was right: I couldn’t really SEE the ice melting. But what I did see is the opportunity to see a place in all of its beauty and wonder. I still feel panicked by the damage that humans may ultimately cause in the Arctic, even more so now than before I visited. But this trip showed me the value of falling in love with a place. To me, it’s real and tangible. I can envision the changes over time. I will remember the smells, the light, the cold.

Anything I can do to help keep this vast place as it is, I will.

Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to write about my experience and post photos here. Stay tuned to learn more about my trip with The Arctic Circle residency from October 1-15, 2018.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

A new voyage

I leave in just a few hours to make the several-day trek to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. I’ll be aboard the tall ship Antigua with The Arctic Circle expedition starting October 1.

One of the things I’m most interested to witness is the quality of light in the extreme northern latitudes. When we arrive in Longyearbyen, there will be 10 hours of daylight. By the time we leave, there will only be 5 — losing about 1/2 hour of light each day.

The other thing I’m really looking forward to (aside from everything we’ll be seeing) is that there won’t be any phone service or internet on the ship. Silence has a profound affect on me and my art, so I welcome this time away from social media and email.

I’ll be back in about a month or so! Stay tuned for updates when I return.

Setting out my gear for the expedition.

Thank you to the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Without a Next Step Fund grant, I wouldn’t have been able to go on this adventure. I’m truly grateful!.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

We are sky.

I've been thinking about separations lately - the edges and boundaries that we create for ourselves. Most of us certainly have psychological separations in the social and political realms of our lives, but I’ve also been thinking about these edges when it comes to thinking about ecology.

When we think about the sky, we may think about it as this immutable blue beyond… it is a layer of the earth that is way above our heads. And, we still might even say that “the sky’s the limit.”

But, there aren’t any real barriers between us and the sky way above our heads. The separation is an illusion. What we call the Sky reaches right down to the ground that we stand on— The sky starts as soon as the ground ends. What is really interesting is that we’re actually breathing sky. The sky’s molecules of oxygen fill our lungs and populate each of the cells in our bodies. We are sky.

Conversely, on the top side of our atmosphere, where does the sky end and outer space begin?

I realize that we have scientific designations that we’ve given to the layers of this paper-thin cover that sustains life on this planet: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Each of these layers has a distinct set of temperature, composition, and airflow. But, if you were to take the viewpoint of an astronaut in orbit, would you be able to see an edge where space stops and earth’s atmosphere starts? I imagine that as you approach the atmosphere, the hardness of its edge begins to fall away. It becomes a gradient with space that slowly merges together.

The only hard edge to be seen is that of the ground.

So, essentially, not only are we breathing sky, we are also in space.

As I start to make the journey to the Arctic 10 days from today, these ideas of separation and interconnection are on the top of my mind. What will I see that forever alters how I think about this planet? Who are the people I’ll meet and share this special time with? How can I translate what I learn into new works of art? No doubt I’ll have things to share along the way, so I intend to blog on the ship and will post my writing when I return.

Thank you for being on this journey with me.

This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC) through a grant from The McKnight Foundation.

Experiments on the Verge

This year, I'm incredibly fortunate to be one of the Art(ists) on the Verge 10 Fellows. This fellowship has already allowed me to learn new practices and grow in ways that extend my work beyond painting. The last few months have been challenging for me in ways that make me feel like my brain is being re-wired. So, I wanted to share some of the work I've done along this journey.

I've been working on trying to pare down experiences to their simplest elements - and make work about those perceptions. I am currently studying low-frequency sound waves. When we were in Botswana a couple of years ago, we had a group of about 30 elephants come through our camp one night. I can still clearly remember almost everything about those ~2 hours. The smells and sounds of them eating the grasses and leaves around our truck... And they made incredible noises aside from the trumpeting we normally think of. One of the other noises they made to communicate was a low-frequency sound that we could barely hear.  But I remember feeling it throughout my body. I've learned that these sounds are called infrasound and are made by different animals besides elephants. 

Working at the edge of what these speakers can create, I started testing low-frequency sounds in the studio. I'm pictured above listening to a 38Hz sound wave.

Experimenting with air sensors

When I started in the program this past winter, my goal was to make work that relates our bodies to the environment we live in -- initially, to make a connection between the air we breathe and the atmosphere that sustains our lives. I have also experimented with air sensors. My thought was to take air sensors that could reflect air composition in a space by emitting changing-colored light of an RGB LED. Although I'm not actively working on this right now, I will probably return to it at some point. I've learned that working with circuits is fun and interesting (and also that I have a lot to learn). 

I hope to update you as this project progresses, no doubt things will still change substantially. And, there is a lot happening this year in addition to this project. I leave for the Arctic in under two months, and I'm working on a large-scale painting project about air quality in Hennepin County. Check back for updates on those projects as well.

A dream for our future

I've shared a dream that I had waking up on New Year's Day this year with some of my closest friends. It has stuck with me for more half of this year, and it feels just as relevant on Independence Day as it did earlier this year, so I figure that I should share it with you, too. This set the tone for my year, and I want to keep it with me for as long as I can.

In my dream, I was driving around Minneapolis. There was garbage throughout the streets. Street signs were toppled, and buildings were crumbling. As I drove, I started to pass under a large sign - like something that hung over a divided highway - but the sign started to fall. I backed up the car as fast as I could to not get crushed. Chaos seemed to be everywhere.

In the car, I was listening to NPR. (Of course.) And, it sounded like the president had been convicted of some wrong-doing. I couldn't tell exactly what had happened, but the way that the reporter was talking about the president made it clear that things had changed. Maybe impeachment processes were underway. Maybe they'd already happened. In the dream, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe our country wasn't all crazy, after all. 

I kept driving until I came to a park. This park was a giant amphitheater, but, like the rest of the city, it was covered in mangled metal, garbage, and pieces of buildings and signs. It was a mess. I couldn't drive any further since the road was completely blocked. I got out of the car and started walking through the lowest part of this giant dump of a valley. But as I did, I realized that people were sitting in the grass up the sides of the park, peppered between the piles garbage and rebar. 

People were just sitting and talking with one another. They were eating lunch and having conversations. I realized that it was actually the people that were pulling the town apart. They were tearing it down so that they could build it back up - together. 

I woke up from this dream on New Year's Day and thought, "We need to get to work!"

This dream might be a metaphor and a signal that this is the best time to make change happen in the world around us. For better or worse, the Trump administration has taught us that our government is pliable and not set in stone. We can make of it what we want. There are no more rules or status quo to prevent us from making the change we want to see for this country. 

If you could tear any part of this country down and rebuild it in a new way, what would it be? Let's do that. 

The things I learn from spending time outside...

For the last 2+ years (maybe more?), we’ve been planning to take out these three bushes behind the house and replace them with raised-bed gardens. Actually, I’ve been cutting them down as close to the ground as possible for that long. They grow like weeds, so I wanted to catch them this year before they had a chance to get even bigger later into the spring.

Ugly root balls of two out of the three bushes dug out of our backyard.

So, today we drove over to Beisswenger’s to buy a mattock to help chop the roots of these pesky bushes in order to get them out - and pick up some other birding/spring backyard needs at the same time. Unfortunately, they didn’t have exactly the tool we wanted (although we bought a ridiculous amount of bird things and ran into a dear friend). When we got home, though, I thought to myself: "I’ve been wanting to take these out for years, I should just see how hard it would be to dig around them." So, I grabbed a shovel and consciously thought to myself that it didn’t matter to me if I finished the project today or just tested to see what it would take. They were already super ugly and budding out with leaves, it didn’t matter if they were also showing their root balls and half-assed dug up. 

I stepped on the shovel pointing into the dirt next to the plant, and it sunk down snapping roots easily as it went. I dug all the way around the first plant, and to my surprise, I was able to simply lift off the pieces of plant - most of those pieces were dead after years of extreme trimming. I had dug all three out in the time-span of about 15 minutes. No mattock necessary.

Why had I not done this years ago? Why hadn’t I even tried? After all, I’ve had the parts to build the raised-beds for probably two years as well, if not more. I expected it to be difficult.

I got to thinking, what other things would be easier than anticipated if we just tried? What other things just need to start? Don’t get me wrong, I know that not all things we dread turn out to be simpler than we plan. But, have you ever had this experience? Have you ever pushed something off for longer than you should just because you expected it to be difficult?