Grow Me A Boat

Under the Bed: Outside Notions of Antarctica

2012-02-11T23:37:00.000-08:00

As someone who has always loved coming up with silly collaborative projects, I often find myself in the position of organizing something and having absolutely no idea who, if anyone, is going to play along and participate. There invariably comes a point at which I wonder why on earth I have once again decided to charge off to do something epic and time consuming that leaves me masochistically busy. But then that point is always followed by the part where people make incredible things, and community is built and fun is had, and I am left delighted and renewed by the whole undertaking.

Under the Bed took on a life of its own. A few months ago, I asked my artist friends to make art about their Outside Notions of Antarctica. Well. They did. And they spread the word. All told, I received work from over thirty artists (much more than that if you count the third grade and high school classes that sent submitted art, but for simplicity's sake I'm considering each class one very large person) hailing from California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Alabama, Maryland and Massachusetts. This left me with the fantastic problem of having too much art to fit under my bed, particularly because some people-- ahem, my dad-- chose to completely ignore the size parameters I had set in my call of art. Because I'd initially asked for tiny art so it would fit under my bed, I felt that it was important to honor the venue.

So I decided to bite the bullet and go through official channels, and I got permission to set up a BUNK bed in Gallagher's Pub, one of the two and a half* bars here on station. Things on station are incredibly hectic right now, as the mainbody crew is starting to go home, and the once-every-two-years resupply vessel is about to arrive. As such, rooms are jam packed and housing couldn't actually loan me an empty bed, so I used my own, and tracked down someone who happened to have an unoccupied bed in their room.

One of the nice things about doing this showing of Under the Bed as a formally recognized event was that I was given the help of the General Assistants (GA's) in setting up. The GA's have pretty much the best job on station; while their job is entry level and doesn't pay well at all, these guys get to go EVERYWHERE. As the title implies, they go wherever help is needed, and so they're always jetting off to field camps and hopping in helicopters to shovel snow and drive snowmobiles all over the continent. I am very, very jealous.

The GA's are my favorite group of people on station, probably because they are the ones who most remind me of the sort of people I am generally friends with back home. As a whole, they're an outdoorsy and gregarious bunch who are competent, down to earth and often hilarious. And I don't know if this just happens to be a particularly good year for GA's, but they are also quite easy on the eyes. Sometimes they rotate through the galley, and because I'm friends with them, they come work with me in my little tucked away Empire of Salad Land, and then the other cooks accuse me of stealing all the eye candy.

Anyways, this is my GA friend Buddy out monitoring fuel lines. This picture pretty much sums up how I think of the GA's: fly fishing, porn, and getting to do all sorts of random weird jobs around station.

That was a bit of a random tangent wasn't it? Ok, onwards and upwards to Under the Bed. I did the best that I could to document, but the turnout for the show was absolutely ridiculous, and once things really got rolling, I had very little time to take pictures of anything.

I got off work on Thursday after working 9 days straight, gratefully grabbed 10 minutes to shower, and then rounded up my GA's, and set about taking apart my beds and moving them into the bar.

A friend who is in charge of the laundry room** hooked me up with sheets to use for the gallery walls, and we strung bailing wire across the bed legs for hanging cables, and wove rope lights through the mattress webbing for a light source.

The Under the Bed Gallery. Looks all warm and inviting sitting there in the middle of the bar, doesn't it?

Gallery sign. The selection of acrylics in the craft room down here was somewhat limited, so I ended up using some very non-Antarctic colors.

We had everything set up and ready to go right around 7pm, and people started trickling in at a little before 7:30.

And then things got crazy.

This is a portion of the line to get in. The wait to get in was well over an hour, and the line snaked all the way around the bar. I have no idea how many people came, but the bar was completely packed, and many people were unfortunately not able to make it under the bed to see the show before the bar closed. Which is really the best sort of problem to have with any sort of opening.

All of the artists wanted their work to find homes down here in Antarctica, and I decided that the best way to make this happen was to give the art away to whoever wanted it the most. With this in mind, I whipped up a handy little form for people to fill out...

People did take me up on trying to bribe me with bourbon, so that also has something to do with why I didn't do the best job of remembering to take pictures as the night went on.

Free Art Forms (FAF's, because in Antarctica we make everything an acronym (IAWMEAA))

Someone folded their form into a paper airplane, and it snowballed from there.

As people were waiting in line, many of them asked if the art was for sale, and I really enjoyed being able to say that it was all free. Creativity and commerce make for awkward bedfellows, and in a perfect world, art would always go to whoever is the most moved by it, not to whoever can afford it...

Here is a random assortment of pictures of the inside of the gallery. It's mighty hard to photograph in such a crowded, tiny space, but I did the best I could.

Nudity is a fairly common occurrence down here in Antarctica, so this piece was quite popular.

The winning FAF.

Kelly Owens, Seattle, WA

Rachel Rader, Seattle, WA

John Boylan, Seattle, WA

Rebecca Reilly, Denver, CO

This piece by Bill Fahey was one of the crowd favorites. Many people argued passionately for why it should go to them, but there was a clear winner. My friends Matt and Baxter work out at the Pegasus runway, and they, quite frankly, have waaaayyyy too much free time out there. So naturally, they brought a dinosaur coloring book out there with them, and they started a wall of dinosaur drawings. Everyone pitches in, and the firefighters out there spend huge portions of their day coloring. I wanted to post a picture for you, but I don't have one... I'll track one down and post it later. Here are a few entertaining FAF's about this piece:

"My mother doesn't believe in dinosaurs, she thinks they are a worldwide government conspiracy." Amazing.

This piece by Jed Dunkerley was also very popular, although some viewers were unsure if the artist is aware that polar bears do not live in Antarctica. The artist's bio did not help clarify this:

"I am an illustrator, collaborator, performer and high school art teacher in Seattle. I painted the scene with a herd of hundreds of polar bears roaming the ice shelf just like they did in real life Antarctica, before they were hunted to extinction by the Eskimos. I wanted to be as realistic as possible, so I showed them engaged in activities that polar bears engage in, like swimming, eating things with blood in them, and humping. I made this to raise awareness about the movement to reintroduce the polar bears to their native habitat."

I tried to help with this situation by posting a photograph I happen to have of the artist wearing a "no polar bears in Antarctica shirt." Oddly, someone stole said photograph.

Here are some FAF's about this piece:

The piece is going up to the Arctic, where its new owner promises that she'll try to take a picture of it with a real live polar bear.

Another crowd favorite, by Jackie Margolis of Bethesda, MA

Sophie Yanow, Montreal, CA

Most people were pretty good about sending me tiny art, but as I mentioned earlier, my dad chose to completely ignore the fact that the gallery was going under a bed,*** and he sent me a large kinetic penguin sculpture.

The artist's description of the piece:

My real claim to any recognition in Antarctica is that I am Tessa's dad, but I am also currently a guest at the Centre for Environmental Biology at Lawrence Berkeley, helping with work on microbial ecology.
My artwork is a kinetic sculpture, the Penguilum, inspired by Tessa's comments about lack of penguins and an idle fascination with the work of Ernst Mach (1838-1916), who came up with the pendulum wave idea. While he made numerous contributions to science and philosophy, he is most famous for his work on shock waves and supersonic speeds which lead to the development of the Mach number, wherein Mach 1 describes speed at which flight becomes supersonic. Obviously, penguins are not fast enough.

Many, many people wanted this one, but again there was a clear winner. This person first won me over by her decision to ignore the front of the form and write whatever she wanted on the back, and then I loved her argument:

You may have seen Karen Joyce in Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World." She is the woman who fits herself into the tiny orange bag. Anyways, she's the proud new owner of the penguilum.

I have many, many more pictures, but am going to call it quits for now as

1. this post is getting epically long

2. I LEAVE ANTARCTICA IN LESS THAN 3 DAYS!!!!! And I really, really, really need to pack. And find some way to come to terms with saying my goodbyes with this place.

I imagine you'll be getting an introspective post about leavings and homecomings from me, but then again, maybe not; this whole year has seen me with zero time to really reflect before charging off to the next thing, and I'm not sure that's something that's going to change.

So I'll just end with a big thank you to:

Claire Siepser Tuscaloosa, AL

Bill Fahey Seattle, WA
John Hulls Point Reyes, CA
Rachel Rader Seattle, WA
Jackie Margolis Bethesda, MD
Marie Gangon Seattle, WA
Anna McKee Seattle, WA
Martha Cederstrom Forest Knolls, CA
Sophia Larsen Forest Knolls, CA
The Wallabies Massachusetts
Annakalmia Traver Brooklyn, NY
Meghann Riepenhoff San Francisco, CA
Eric Carson Seattle, WA
Rebecca Reilly Denver, CO
Sarah Diehl Seattle, WA
Kelly Owens Seattle, WA
Nichole Rathburn Seattle, WA
Larry Cwik Portland, OR
Klara Glosova Seattle, WA
John Boylan Seattle, WA
Sophie Yanow Montreal, Canada

Jed Dunkerley Seattle, WA
Vivian Hua Portland, OR
Ellie Ray Portland, OR
Saskia Delores Seattle, WA
Jess Engle Leadville, CO
Theadora Tolkin Brooklyn, NY
Leah Faw Oakland, CA
Zach Gore Seattle, WA

And a few sneak preview shots of where I've been taking the art:

The Wallabies Newbury, Mass

Eric Carson Seattle, WA

Sarah Diehl Seattle, WA

The Wallabies Newbury, Mass

*there are two bars and one coffee house. The coffee house serves whiskey and wine, so it's sort of a bar, but generally more mellow. I have not seen people take their shirts off and dance on tables at the coffee house. Cannot say the same for Southern Exposure or Gallagher's.
**interesting Antarctic fact: due to a very dry climate and overtaxed dryers, we have frequent laundry room fires down here. We've had to evacuate the building because of them a few times.
***ever have those moments where you realize you're too much like your parents? Yeah... We both get projects lodged in our heads and ignore practical things that might impede doing them exactly as we want to

The ice shelf is indeed the ocean, and the joys of sleeping in a snow trench

2012-01-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

I took this picture as I was taking out the trash after a night of bartending. Still stops me in my tracks every time. You can see open water on the right side of the picture, compliments of the Russian icebreaker that's been milling about creating a path for the fuel tanker and resupply vessel.

This little guy (ok, he's really not that little, but the mountains make everything seem really small) has been doing circles for the past week or so breaking up the sea ice. While I've always known that I live on an island, there's an entirely different level of impact that occurs when you actually see a boat come in and turn your ice shelf into actual ocean.

It's been a busy past few weeks on my end. My time down here on the ice is coming to an end, and I've only got 16 days left. This is starting to slowly sink in, but I haven't had time to fully mull it over yet, and I probably won't be able to think about it until just before I leave because I'm deep in the throes of organizing things for the Under the Bed Gallery: Outside Notions of Antarctica show. The opening will be happening on Friday, February 9th from 7:30-10:30pm; feel free to hitch a ride on a C130 and come on down!

A huge thank you to everyone who sent me art: I received far too much to actually fit under my bed, which is a great problem to have. I've come up with a solution that I think will be entertaining for everyone, but more on that later...

A few weeks ago I got to go to Snow Survival School, AKA Happy Camper, AKA "that part in Encounters at the End of the World where everyone puts buckets on their heads." We learned how to make a quarry and use snow blocks to build wind walls, how to dig angled pits to anchor our tent stakes in the snow, and how to construct snow trenches.

Building our camp kitchen.

Tents for those folks who weren't really excited about spending a few extra hours digging a big hole to sleep in.

Speaking of tents, I'm going to digress for a minute to share with you some of my opinions about outdoor gear. My friend Matt Romero (who also keeps a blog and is better than I am about posting lots of pictures) has hiked the PCT a few times, and generally has some pretty strong opinions about ultralight backpacking. Matt is one of my closest friends down here, and a while back we had a serious test of our friendship because we ended up discussing gear. It turns out we disagree. Strongly.

Matt gave a clinic on ultralight gear a few weeks ago, and he invited me to offer my opinions as a counterpoint to his talk. This was when I was still putting all my drawing time towards my travelogue, but ultralight disciples are such a pet peeve of mine that I decided I would somehow find time to contribute something. I drew these at the bar after perhaps a few too many whiskey gingers, so they're... uh... maybe a little harsh in their condemnation. But I stand behind the sentiments.

Ok, back to Happy Camper: I opted to dig a snow trench. My room at McMurdo has four people in it, and there is just enough room for our beds. You can't actually walk from one end of the room to the other if any of our wardrobe doors are open, and one of my roommates is a Midrat (works night shift), so there is always someone asleep such that you can't turn the lights on. It's been fine, because I'm almost never in my room, but at times it does get old having my room be a tiny enclosed space that I must always navigate via headlamp. My trench was the first time I'd had any sort of space that was truly my own, and I relished the privacy of it. I pretended that I was Badger from The Wind in the Willows, and I really didn't want to come out.

Taking a digging break.

The view from inside before I put my roof (a sled balanced on two bamboo poles, covered in snow bricks) on. It was probably about 9pm when I took this picture. So many months of full sunlight... My circadian rhythms are all shot. Good thing there's no time to sleep anyways!

The next day we got to learn how to operate an old Vietnam era field radio.

Yay for getting to actually play outside! I'm going to wrap up this post for now, but I'll give you a sneak peek of the topic I'll be sharing in my next post:

This is the fuel tanker than just showed up last week. It's bringing us six million gallons of fuel, and they let me take a tour....

Travelogue, snow mobiling, radio show

2012-01-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, dear readers-- as promised, my travelogue is out of the way, and I now can get back to keeping you at least somewhat abreast of life down here in the very deep South. Here are a few of the images from my travelogue, offered mostly so you can see that I do actually have a decent justification for not posting lately:

All told, I made about 20 illustrations, and it made me realize that I want to make more. Like.... maybe a hundred more. I might be working on this one for a while.

But back to the matter at hand. Antarctica! I figure it's probably due time for a bit of a geography lesson. This place is disorienting for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the inherent ridiculousness of getting to physically be on this continent, but McMurdo is also extremely confusing in terms of its orientation with the rest of Antarctica. So here is Antarctica. You can see McMurdo written in red near the bottom:

And here is the where I live. McMurdo is located on Ross Island, a 950 square mile island formed by four volcanoes:

Living on an island is very confusing, because much of the "land" that I can see (and sometimes ride snowmobiles over!) is, in fact, frozen ocean, and when I look off at distant volcanoes, I am actually looking AWAY from the actual land mass of the continent.

Ross Island is effectively connected to the rest of the continent by means of a permanent ice sheet, but by technical definition, McMurdo is not actually located on the Antarctic continent. This amuses me to no end, because it means that all the people who have come down here simply to check Antarctica off their list of traveling to all seven continents are not actually accomplishing their goal.

I have to say that I have been somewhat surprised by how many people down here seem to be in it just to say that they've been, rather than to actually engage with this place. Going into this, I had this expectation that the people who come down to work in Antarctica would all be inquisitive adventurers, drawn by the romance of the frozen frontier and the allure of a landscape that is one of the last true bastions of wildness. Documentaries like Encounters at the End of the World perpetuate this notion, and it's been a bit disillusioning to instead discover that most people come down here and do everything in their power to distract themselves from thinking about where they are.

I worry sometimes that I'm becoming a terrible elitist, because I so often find myself wandering around looking at other people and wondering, "You're here, but what are you getting out of it?"

Anyways, back to my initial discussion of Antarctic geography. I drew a comic to provide a basic overview of Antarctica and McMurdo's location on the continent:

You know what I've found to be the best method for getting a handle on the geography down here? Riding a snowmobile across the ice shelf, because then you don't care in the slightest which cardinal direction you're facing. The powers that be occasionally issue morale trips, which, because nothing down here can be called by a normal descriptive title, are called Boondoggles. A while back I got to participate in a Boondoggle called Room With a View, which involves snowmobiling across the frozen Ross Sea.

We started off by piling into a Pisten Bully, one of the many silly looking vehicles down here. Check out the fantastic 80's-fabulous font and color choice on the vehicle name. We keep it classy in Antarctica. Wish I'd taken a picture of the interior seat upholstery...

We then made our way to our faithful steeds.

And drove off into the distance. I don't know about everyone else, but I was totally living out some sort of post-apocalyptic desert (because Antarctica is technically a desert, after all) fantasy in my head.

We stopped for lunch at the base of Mount Erebus. And because a huge part of the Antarctic experience involves wearing not nearly enough clothes for the climate (you don't need to wear pants if you're only dashing 20 yards between the station's two bars, right?), it seemed like the right thing to do to strip down to bunny boots and underwear and frolick merrily off into the distance. By which I mean the flag line, because we are expressly forbidden to ever cross flags due to the dangers of crevasse fields.

On the way back we worked to flag the route, which was ridiculously fun. We loaded up our snowmobiles with flags, and took turns leapfrogging and driving them into the ground. I appropriately amended my post apocalyptic desert fantasy to include jousting.

So. Much. Fun. My morale was definitely boosted by the end of the trip.

I've mentioned at various points that I've been doing a radio show down here, and I figure it's high time I elaborate on this, as it's more or less the highlight of my week.

Every week I pick a theme (a la This American Life), and then spend more time than I have delving through the beautiful chaos of the vinyl room. M first show was songs about home. Yes, it has taken me three months to get around to posting a playlist, but better late than never, right? Hopefully I'll start getting these up more regularly. Themes since then have included science, poor life decisions, sleep, drinking, sundays and more...

Poor Life Decisions: HOME
1. Lou Reed- Talk a Walk on the Wild Side
2. Emerson Lake and Palmer- Show Me the Way to Go Home

3. Eric Clapton- Swing Low Sweet Chariot

4. John Denver- Take Me Home Country Roads

5. Willie Nelson- Graceland

6. Paul Simon- Slip Sliding Away

7. Peter Paul and Mary- Leaving on a Jet Plane

8. Genesis- Home by the Sea

9. Animals- We Gotta Get Out of this Place

10. Simon and Garfunkel- Homeward Bound

11. Cher- Bang Bang

12. James Taylor- Captain Jim’s Drunken Dream

13. Peter Shilling- Space Oddity

14. Joni Mitchell- Cactus Tree

15. Otis Redding- Sitting By the Dock of the Bay

16. The Nashville Guitars at Home- The Green Green Grass of Home (can't find it online)

17. Jo and Broadway- Anyplace I Hang My Hat is Home

I couldn't find the version I played, but here's Sammy Davis singing it.

18. Andrews Sisters- Don’t Fence Me In

Most amazing video ever

2012-01-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

I realize I've been lax about posting of late, and I plan to rectify this after my travelogue on Monday, but for now I wanted to share this RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME VIDEO that some folks down here made about the race to be the first to the South Pole.

For some reason the embed code isn't working, so just follow this link. I promise it's worth it. This video gave me so much renewed creative energy and inspiration for this place, I cannot say enough good things about it.

Also, briefly-- a big thank you to the people who have been sending stuff for Under the Bed. I am delightfully overwhelmed by the number of submissions! But I only have a month left down here, so we're getting to the point where mail will make it down here after I'm gone. So no more mail, please.

Penguins, gingerbread transport vehicles, travelogues and moooorrrreeee

2012-01-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

In my last post I jokingly complained about the fact that I basically don't get to see any of the things that one typically associates with Antarctica. The universe was kind enough to listen to my rant, and I FINALLY GOT TO SEE PENGUINS! There they are. Being all penguiny. Yup. Can check that one off the list.

The last few weeks have been totally crazy, and I haven't found myself with any free time to post. I've been working on a few large art projects that have been taking up all of my seated hand eye coordination time, and I haven't really put my brush pens down long enough to type.

One of the many things that I dearly love about being down here is the opportunity to hear interesting presentations from members of the community. There are science lectures on Wednesday and Sunday nights, and there's an occasional speaker series called "Secret Lives" in which people talk about what they do when they're not on the ice. My favorite series happens every Monday night, when you get to go hear Travelogues.

As you might expect of the group of people who decide to come work in Antarctica, there are folks down here who have gone on some pretty incredible trips. And every Monday night, you get to hear someone talk about their travels. It's made me realize that there aren't really venues for people to talk about such things. Seattle friends, you had best start brushing off your old photos and journals, because you best believe that when I get back, I'm taking this Antarctic tradition with me, and I'm going to be pestering you about presenting.

Anyways! My point in talking about this is to tell you that one of the main reasons I haven't been blogging lately is because I am working on a travelogue about my bike trip. I decided to illustrate it and, not surprisingly, I have gone a little bit overboard in the scope of my ambitions... I am having WAY too much fun with this, and am realizing that perhaps the travelogue is only the beginning of this project. I have always wanted to write a graphic novel, and this past year has given me more fodder than I really even know what to do with....

In other art news, submissions have been pouring in for February's Under the Bed show, and I am extremely excited! I've been getting some incredible stuff, like this wonderful letter and its accompanying wonderful art:

Thus far I have received entries from New York, Maryland, Colorado, California, Washington, Oregon, and Massachusetts. So a big thank you to everyone who helped spread the word, and I'll be posting more about the opening (tentatively slated for February 6th) in the coming weeks.

I've been getting emails lately from people asking what it is I actually DO all day, and what an Antarctic kitchen is like. Cooking in Antarctica is surprisingly like cooking anywhere else. Before coming down here, I expected that I'd be working with only canned and frozen materials, but we in fact get many thousands of pounds of produce shipped in from New Zealand every week. The flights are often delayed because of the weather, but for the most part, I am cooking with a lot more fresh vegetables than you might think. I even get papayas and mangoes down here. Crazy, right?! A friend of mine who is from North Dakota had his first mango here in Antarctica.

I'm going to do a more in depth post about this at some later date, but for now I thought I'd amuse you with some pictures of entirely superfluous things that I have made. The kitchen down here is pretty great in that, so long as you get your work done, you have total free rein to make fun things. I was raised by a father who always encouraged me to play with my food, and a mother who realized she probably couldn't stop me, so it's quite gratifying to now actually get paid to make unnecessarily complicated little food diorama. And apparently my bosses consider my food sculptures to be good for workplace morale, which is hilarious but I'll take it...

Salmon platter pond scene, although I did make these guys look more like catfish with their onion whiskers and all.

I made an alien landscape of pate beasts for our Christmas meal. The trees are deep fried parsnip curls and grape stems stuck into bricks of cheese.

And to continue with the food theme of this post, here are pictures of what everyone made for the gingerbread building contest. As you can see, Antarctic vehicles are a popular theme down here.

Under the Bed Gallery Opening

2011-12-23T01:25:00.000-08:00

I was going to start with a picture of a beautiful Antarctic vista, but I realized I haven't really ended up with any new ones in a while. This is because I am only allowed to wander within a very small, contained area, and all my pictures start to look the same because there are a limited number of vantage points. So instead of a photo, here is a comic that addresses the very tight leash that I am kept on, and how I choose to deal with it:

Obviously I failed at posting on my day off. I think I instead ended up locking myself in the record room all day and drawing, which I needed for my own sense of sanity. I am doing my best to keep you abreast of my continued shennanigans down here, but I am tiiirrreeeeed. Very, very, very tired. I was talking to a friend down here, and she said that you have just enough time to do one thing outside of work, and that most people choose to make that thing drinking.

This is a very true statement.

I'm trying to keep up my usual Tessa pace and do about 5 things outside of work (on that note, I'm going to start posting playlists from my radio shows... eventually... at some point... when I find time... (also, I apologize to all the people I owe letters to! I'm working on them...)), and am definitely beginning to feel pretty worn down from the effort. At the end of this contract, I intend to give myself the sort of vacation that I usually consider to be my personal version of purgatory. I am going to find somewhere comfy to collapse-- preferably a hammock on a warm beach-- and drink cocktails with tiny umbrellas in them and keep my decision making to such compelling issues as, "Which section of the Sunday times would I like to read first?" and "Do I want to nap now, or nap later?"

Anyways, since my last post, I hosted the first opening for the Under the Bed Gallery. The vague theme of the show was "Things That Have Come to Seem Normal," and the idea was for people to make art about the strange things they'd adapted to after being down here for too long. Some people decided to go with that theme, but for the most part it was a delightful free for all. Instead of rambling on, I'm just going to post pictures. I even took some videos for you at the end of this post.

Keep the Outside Notions of Antarctica submissions coming!

So... For context, someone pooped on a chair in one of the lounges. It was discovered by the janitors, and no one is fessing up to who did it or why. It has been the talk of the town for weeks. Various McMurdo bands have written songs about the poop chair, and it's a common party game to ruminate on the context leading up to its creation.

Part of our ridiculous bureaucracy down here involves filling out Labor Allocation Sheets (LAS), in which we account for literally every minute of our work day. We break down our hours into such inane categories as "Safety Meeting" or "Stretch Break" or "Preparing Flight Lunches." These categories are absurdly specific, and I think there are something like ~80 options of common activities, and then a write in space for "Other." I really, really wonder what you would have to do at work such that there wasn't a line to write it in. We have to fill these out every day, and we get angry emails if we don't have them filed by 10:30am. Each friday we have to Lock and Certify our hours, and if we don't do that on time, then the world ends and the universe implodes and we get written up and have to have meetings with our big HR bosses. I find this all quite fascinating, as bureaucracy is something I have always avoided like the plague.

Anyways, Jason made an LAS sheet accounting for all 24 hours of the day. It's a little depressing. But also funny.

This is a pretty accurate depiction of the kitchen. We have a lot of fun at work. There are many spontaneous dance numbers and discussions of dinosaurs, and sometimes we lose our voices because we decide to spend four hours loudly singing along to all of our music in the style of Cher.

My favorite piece. Video of it at the bottom of this post.

Interview on Squidface and the Meddler

2011-12-16T14:00:00.000-08:00

This post has nothing at all to do with Antarctica, but I recently got asked to do an interview for the Toronto based arts magazine Squidface and the Meddler. I really enjoyed some of the questions they asked, and ended up illustrating some of my responses. Here are some of the comics I drew for them, and you can check out the full interview here.

I promise I'll put up some more Antarctic related posts soon, probably on my day off on Tuesday. So much to do, so little time!

A plane crash and some art updates

2011-12-12T15:04:00.000-08:00

The post isn't really all that Antarctic, but here are some fun pictures of a plane crash from 1971 to give you your fix of strange things down in the very deep south. It's an enormous pain to ship things off continent, so when this plane went down, the crash was more or less left where it landed.

And now on to the non-Antarctic portion of today's post!

One of my favorite things about traveling and/or ending up in weird remote places is that I get to more or less ignore all the practical, business-y aspects of being an artist and just play around with making things. I make art because it's a joyous compulsion, and I wouldn't be able to stop myself even if I wanted to. But I have yet to figure out how to fully make my peace with the idea of art as a commodity. When I get back from this particular adventure, I think I might just wait tables a few days a week and keep creativity and commerce as separate as possible.... Anyways, my "art career" seems happily far away and abstract from down here, but some of my Northwest art friends have done some pretty wonderful things recently and I am proud of them and would like to share.

People often ask me how I first heard about working in Antarctica and how I subsequently ended up down here. The short answer is: Tia Kramer.

Tia and I met because we both had art studios in the same warehouse space. Tia is a wonderfully talented sculptor and jeweler, and she is also my creative mentor when it come to all the organizational, business aspects of making things for a living. She also always has tasty snacks, and has saved me from low blood sugar many times over because sometimes when I am working, I forget that I need to eat. She was recently interviewed in American Craft Magazine!

Yay for seeing fabulous artist friends receive the recognition they deserve!

One of my favorite things about writing for an arts magazine is that I get to meet my art crushes. Last summer I got to sit down with Stacey Rozich for an interview for Redefine Magazine, and Stacey's stuff has been circulating like wildfire over the last few years. Stacey recently worked on this incredible video for Seattle's Fleet Foxes. Amazing! I have fallen hopelessly in love with it, and will hopefully be doing some sort of a mini interview (because I have so much free time, right?) with Stacey about the process of working on it.

The Shrine / An Argument from Sean Pecknold on Vimeo.

Annnndddd, last but not least, AJ Fosik! He's been one of my favorite artists for years, and I got to chat with him about his work before heading down here to the ice.

Two Months

2011-12-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

I realized this morning that I've now been in Antarctica for two months. Two months of stepping outside and looking at views like this, and it still renders me speechless every time. Which, I think, is exactly how it should be. Sometimes it seems like I've been here for three days, and other times it seems like at least nine months. Time becomes pretty subjective when you haven't seen sunrise, sunset or stars in 60 days.

My dad recently forwarded me this amazing Herbert Ponting Antarctic photograph. I would love to get to see something like this-- if only I could, say, be down here on the artists and writers grant... I'm just going to just keep mentioning this repeatedly in the hopes that the universe, as it is sometimes wont to do, might deliver if I ask it enough.

It's my day off and I'm currently camped out in the coffee shop working on six (I mean this literally, not figuratively) different art/writing projects, so I'm going to get back to those and just quickly post some images of various things I've been working on. And let's face it-- people just look at blogs for the pictures, right?

Poster design for Freezing Man, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Poster design for the Fuels department's Mad Max Party, which I am RIDICULOUSLY excited about because I LOVE anything having to do with the apocalypse. I have been skuaing various portions of my costume for weeks.

My own submission for Under the Bed Gallery's "These Things Have Come to Seem Normal" show.

I'm also ostensibly writing a comic strip called "Family Meal" about dumb/silly things that happen in the kitchen down here.

OK! Back to work! And thanks to everyone who has gotten in touch about Under the Bed. Get those submissions in!

Antarctic Call for Artists! Under the Bed Gallery

2011-11-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

Why hello there people reading this thing. I know there are actually a fair amount of you, because a few days ago someone told me that I could check visitor stats, and apparently I am not just rambling to myself on the internet (Hi four people from Russia! We probably live in similar climates!).

I've always been a bit uncomfortable with blogging because it seems a bit self aggrandizing and one sided, and I much prefer to communicate in ways that involve interaction. But I have come up with a way to make this a bit more participatory, and I've started something that I want all of YOU to be a part of.

The notion of collaboration has been on my mind a lot of late, and I have been mulling over ways to share the bizarre magic of this environment from afar. Inspired by such lovely endeavors as NEPO house, Vignettes and The Telephone Room, I am pleased to announce that I have founded the Under the Bed Gallery here at McMurdo Station, Ross Island Ice Shelf, Antarctica.

I’m currently putting together the inaugural local show “These things have come to seem normal after living this long on the ice” (for example: the fact that the discovery of a fruit fly is exciting enough to stop dinner conversations, routinely wearing shoes that have pressure valves to regulate insulating air pockets, eating 6 desserts a day, bartering with produce, and speaking entirely in acronyms), and am hoping that you lovely folks will participate in my upcoming February show, "Outside Notions of Antarctica."

I’m looking for your ideas of Antarctica—informed, idealized, or entirely fabricated. Any and all mediums happily accepted, so long as 1. you can ship it to me without violating customs agreements and 2. it’s small. As you might imagine based on the name, Under the Bed Gallery has limited space, so please keep 2D submissions to 8.5”x11” or smaller, and with 3D pieces… well, be reasonable. And know that anything shipped in a box takes a very, very long time to get down here. Feel free to submit poems, prose or any sort of audio, and if you have a performance piece that I can somehow make happen, let’s chat.

Send submissions to:
Tessa Hulls, NANA
McMurdo Station
PSC 469 Box 700
APO AP 96599

ALL SUBMISSIONS MUST BE POSTMARKED BY JANUARY 1, 2012!! Delivery times are wildly inconsistent down here, so it’s best to err on the side of caution. If you would like your piece returned, please include appropriate shipping and handling. Otherwise (and this strikes me as a much more mutually beneficial arrangement), I will install it somewhere strange down here and send you a picture of its new icy home.

If you would like to collaborate in other ways, chances are I will be very excited about any ideas you might happen to have… Want me to wear a People's Republic of Cascadia scarf and spread the word about the Northwest secessionist movement? Leave a copy of your book in the library? Send you a picture of something strange and provide you with absolutely no context? Shout your poem out to a seal? I'm probably down.

Please spread the word to interested parties!

Under the Bed is currently set up as my studio. Here's a picture; it's quite cozy... I spend a lot of time down here.

Antarctic Erotica

2011-11-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been a while since the last post... I am still alive, well, and ludicrously busy, and I have been continuing to draw Antarctic comics. And about a gazillion other things. I have plans for some lengthier posts in the next few days/weeks, but for now here is a crazy landscape picture (I know, I've fallen a bit behind in posting those...):

and some pictures of "Mustache Alley," because people tend to have a sense of humor about organization down here:

and a comic about Antarctic Erotica:

I have a new project that I am VERY excited about, and it's going to require your participation... more on that soon! Like within the next 24 hours, unless I get distracted. Which, I will concede, happens pretty often down here.

Birthday contemplation

2011-11-16T14:03:00.001-08:00

It's my birthday today (international dateline-- not only do I get to be in Antarctica, I get to be from the future, too) and I am feeling extraordinarily grateful for everything I've learned from the past, inspired by the present, and excited for all the adventures of the future. A big thanks to all you amazing people in my life who keep me inspired and full of wonder. It seems fitting today to share with you the comic that I always keep above my various art makin' spaces:

SKUA: Antarctica's Permanent Free Bin

2011-11-15T02:36:00.000-08:00

In spite of the very limited number of animals down here on the ice, Antarctica does have its very own obnoxious pest: the skua. Skuas look a lot like brownish seagulls, and they brazenly attempt to steal anything and everything that seems even in the slightest bit edible. They've started to show up in earnest the past few weeks as the temperatures have been warming (it's been hitting the mid 20's, and is even starting to creep up into the 30's, which feels INSANELY warm to me. I never really posted about some of the colder days we've seen on station, but I have been outside in -40, just to give you an idea of the weird things that have started to seem normal to me), and they hang out near the loading dock of the galley quite a bit. They have a scavenging technique that involves using a "bait skua" that sits right in front of you and lets you get within a few feet of it, distracting you while its compatriots sneak up behind and to attack your food and shiny things. Fascinatingly wily, eh?

Someone made this delightful ceramic skua; he lives in the library. I read next to him a lot.

Skuas are pretty cool animals, but there's a second and far superior sort of Skua down here. I shall try to explain to you, but it's hard to know where to start. Those of you who know me well will probably quickly understand why I find this to be, hands down, one of the most fascinating and overwhelming sources of creative fodder I have ever encountered. McMurdo basically has an entire building that functions as a permanent free bin. People are often abandoning things they don't want to lug back to the mainland, and no one really knows what to bring to Antarctica, so it's kept well stocked with... just... everything you could ever possibly hope to find. I draw very little distinction between the roles of artist and sociologist, so I've made it a part of my normal routine to stop by Skua every few days to document and ponder some of the best finds.

Here's a picture to give you a general idea. This really doesn't do the randomness of this place any justice. There is SO MUCH treasure to be found in here....

And here's a comic, because I can't seem to stop drawing them. Eventually I'll learn to make them a little smaller so they'll scan better...

In other news, I continue to be inhumanly busy. I would say that I have about my usual half dozenish creative projects going, but I've never had to contend with a 60 hour workweek before. This is the first time in my life that I'm having to face up to the fact that even my ninja-like time management skills cannot make it possible for me to do everything I want to do down here. So I've picked my battles, and have given up some things that are usually pretty dear to me-- namely sleep (well, that's not really true: sleep has never been high on my list of priorities), bourbon, exercise and anything resembling a normal social life.

That's how damn inspiring I find this place.

I have decided that, for my time here, I'm going to try to live as though I am here through the Antarctic Artists and Writers Program instead of being here as a cook. I will try to pretend I'm not at work in the kitchen 6 days a week, and that it is instead my job to draw and write and listen and paint 60 hours a week, and I will sleep in March. It will be just like one very, very long day. Which, really, is what this whole year has felt like.

I made another comic that kind of touches on the wonderful insanity of this pace:

Whiskey Gingers at the End of the World

2011-11-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

Just in case I hadn't already taken on enough outside of work activities (I love ridiculously over committing myself to art and writing projects that I don't really have time for!), I'm writing a column about drinking in Antarctica for my friends over at The Alcohol Enthusiast. Check out the inaugural column for Whiskey Gingers at the End of the World.

I took an additional part time job bartending down here, so expect some good fodder and some whiskey related comics!

The Record Room

2011-11-07T17:15:00.000-08:00

I've been debating whether or not to write about this room because a part of me is really drawn to the fact that it's a bit of a secret, and that you more or less only stumble upon it because someone who already knows about it has grandfathered you in. But seeing as most of you probably won't make the trek down here (although I highly recommend that you do!), I'll go ahead and tell you about it:

They've been replacing all the equipment in the radio room (it used to look a bit like a beat up 70's lounge and now it looks like a spaceship), so it's been out of commission for radio shows for the past few weeks, but soon I'll be hosting my own two hour radio show. My plan is to delve through the record room and do themed shows; I'm thinking of starting with "Whiskey," and am open to suggestions for future themes.
I did some inquisitive youtube searching to see how many of the weird things I've found down here have been digitized in some capacity, and have been surprised and impressed to see how many of these obscure... uh... gems have made their way onto the internet. To give you a small sampling of some of the stuff I've found in here:
Around the World With The Rubber Duck
Mr. T Public Service Announcement
Baroque Hoedown
And here is my personal favorite, just to prove to you that sometimes I do find really gorgeous, moving things in amongst the novelty: the Robert Shaw Chorale singing Shenandoah
and them again singing Auld Lyne Syne.

Have I mentioned that I love it here? I find this place to be so overwhelmingly inspiring, and it's a cruel tease to have to steal precious sketchbook moments in tiny little chunks between work and play. I wish each day had about ten more hours in it....

The Gender Ratio

2011-11-03T02:46:00.000-07:00

My dad and I are both voracious readers, and when I decided to come down here, he gave me a copy of Kim Stanley Robinson’s book “Antarctica.” There’s a line in the opening chapter that says something to the effect of, “Bringing a boyfriend to McMurdo is like bringing your own sandwich to a buffet.” There’s certainly some truth to that.

Here's another picture from the Halloween party that nicely illustrates my point. Two of these gentlemen are my suite mates (I live in a flamboyant tiki lounge that is the informal epicenter of the McMurdo gay community-- don't worry, I will elaborate on this in some later post, complete with illustrations), and their costume is a reference to the fact that OSHA safety regulations say that for any object heavier than 40 pounds, you must find a second person and perform a team lift. I told them I'd make their t-shirts and give them all sharpie sailor tattoos with their supervisor's name on them if they bought all my whiskey for the night. Totally mutually beneficial arrangement.

The current gender ratio here on station stands at 28.2% female and 71.8% male. This is actually less noticeable than one might expect, as cold weather gear makes it impossible to discern gender when anyone is outside, and even indoors, the first thing your eyes register is an impressive expanse of gender neutral carhartt overalls. But when you stop and look for it, you do realize that there are a loootttt more men than women down here. Most of this can be chalked up to the fact that the majority of the jobs available are in the trades, and the fact of the matter is that most mechanics, electricians and heavy equipment operators are men.

Working in the galley, the gender balance is somewhat more even (what with women knowing their role and staying in the kitchen and all… Kidding: the women down here are decidedly not of the submissive wallflower variety), although there are definitely still quite a few more men than women.

Whatever the reasons are, this gender balance makes for some incredibly interesting social dynamics. I’ve been wanting to do a series of graphic novel-ish illustrations about day to day life down here, so here is my first attempt. I’ve never worked in this medium before (brush pen and India ink), so it felt a little awkward, but satisfying. Also, the only scanner I could find is too small for the paper I used, so it's kinda weirdly cropped:

And I had so much fun with that one that I did another little one about a hike I went on last week:

I’ve been thinking it would also be a fun project to illustrate a series of McMurdo Missed Connections: “You: Female (I hope? Could have been a beard tucked away under that balaklava?) Walking to the mail room in a white out, was drawn to the alluring way you clutched your hood closer to your face to block out the wind. Drinks at Southern sometime? Me: Male, bearded, wearing carhartt overalls and a Big Red.”

It’s strange being in an environment in which my gender makes me something of a scarce commodity, and, as a cook, I have the added allure of being one of a very small handful of people on station who is able to say the three words guaranteed to win over any heart: I have avocados. I feel a bit like I’ve ended up in Vegas at a point where I don’t really feel like going to casinos and would instead rather stay in and read a good book. Funny how these things work out, eh?

Gender isn’t something that I put much thought to in my stationary life, but it is a topic that comes up constantly when I am traveling (or, as it turns out, when I’m in Antarctica). I always travel by myself, and as such, I’m very, very used to people telling me that it’s not safe for a woman to travel alone. It’s easy enough to hear from men, because with them you can just politely listen and smile and tell them that you disagree, and then go out and live your life in a way that proves them unequivocally wrong.

But it’s always heartbreaking for me to hear other women tell me that they wouldn’t feel safe traveling alone, and how they don’t feel strong enough to do it. I wish that those women would go out and experience the overwhelming hospitality and inherent goodness of strangers, but I know that they never will. If you go out already determined to be afraid, you will find things to reinforce your fear.

I can get pretty angry about the self perpetuating myth that travel isn't safe for a solo female, and I think part of the reason I choose to travel the way that I do is because I want to do my part to chip away at an unwarranted culture of fear. Sure, bad things happen, but hiding yourself in the cloistered safety of the familiar isn’t going to protect you from those things. It just saddens me that so many people have been brought up on the myth that the world outside of their immediate horizon is populated by bad people who want to do them harm.

Sorry for the soapbox moment... Just happens to be a topic I have strong opinions on. Expect more comics from me! I'm having fun with them!

Halloween in Antarctica

2011-11-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

Howdy friends. I'm out of commission with a nasty cold, so I won't say much about Halloween down here. Only that it was as ridiculous as one might expect. Following my trend of the last few years (Little Prince's asteroid, a giant angler fish), I made a costume of something I dearly love:

We took another Occupy Wall Street Picture with all of us in our costumes.

You know... I think this picture says all that needs saying. I'm going back to bed.

Put a bird on it, Antarctica style

2011-10-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the ridiculous vista picture of the day to start us off.

Those three tiny figures are some friends of mine who were out watching a pregnant seal. This is the closest thing I ever see to darkness; the sun really doesn't get any lower than this, and even this approximation of a sunset will soon disappear as the season progresses. This was taken around 11pm. I walked out of the bar after watching the world cup rugby finals and decided that I needed to take myself on a long, meandering think. There's something to be said for perpetual sunlight and being able to charge off on a hike at any hour of the day or night. I will say, though, that it's giving me some mighty strange sleeping habits. By which I mean I don't really sleep.

What I want to talk about today is the prevalence of all things penguin related. As far as I can tell, there are two reasons for this overabundance of penguins: 1. Penguins are really cute. 2. There aren't really any other animals down here, so they win by default. I keep thinking of the put a bird on it Portlandia sketch (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're clearly on the internet-- google it and watch)... Penguins are the unofficial mascot of Antarctica, and as such their likeness shows up on every sticker, patch, memo, sign etc. on station.

I decided to walk about with my camera for half an hour to take pictures of every penguin related thing I saw in the course of my natural wanderings. I actually gave up after about 10 minutes because there were just too many penguins to photograph and I lost interest. But this gives you a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about.

This is one of my favorites. Adorable!

Bookdrop. I do believe that all libraries should have bookdrops that look like this.

Penguins flanking the doors to the chapel.

View from the chapel window. I love the fact that someone actually made a stained glass window in the shape of antarctica with a penguin in it.

Penguin banners in the library. There's a lot of strange art down here, and I'm gathering material for a future post about Antarctic Art.

While Antarctica has a lot of penguins, do you know what it doesn't have? Polar bears. Those only live in the Arctic. People apparently don't necessarily know this, and so someone made a very helpful t-shirt that is far and away my favorite item available for purchase at the McMurdo Station Store:

I've spent the last few years on a crusade to not own unnecessary possessions, and I have a pretty firm rule about not acquiring any sort of commemorative memorabilia T-shirts, but I might have to make an exception for this one.

Solidarity from Antarctica and a very cold hike

2011-10-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

I didn't actually take this one, but I figured it was awesome enough to be worth nabbing and sharing. You might have seen this kicking around other places on ze interwebs, as it seems to have gone viral on facebook and reddit and other such things. Four of these folks are my roommates, and they took this a few days before I arrived. Kind of crazy how small the world can become...

Yesterday was my day off, so I waited around in the galley until I found someone else who doesn't work Tuesdays so I could kidnap them and go hiking. You have to take a buddy with you on most of the hikes that you can do around here, and you also have to check in with the fire house and get a radio and give a detailed account of where you're planning on going and how long you'll be gone. If you don't show up by your estimated return time, they start mobilizing helicopters and search and rescue. People have died while out hiking, so it's a very good policy, but the fire house gets very mad at you if you forget to check in and they have to send out helicopters when you're actually just back in your room drinking a beer.

One of the two emergency shelters along the route. They're pretty adorable. They're stocked with caches of food, extra sleeping bags, camp stoves, and a very random assortment of out of date reading material. One of them had a National Enquirer from 2009 in it.

Complete with classy furniture!

They look a bit like flying saucers from the inside.

...which is fitting because the landscape looks like another planet.

That little dome off in the distance is some sort of fancy science thingee. I'm going to go investigate it sometime this week.

This is what I looked like by the end of the hike. It's a very strange feeling to not be able to blink properly because your eyelashes are frozen together. Also, this picture further confuses me as to whether my eyes are hazel or brown. I think I could argue for either?

The Observation Tube!

2011-10-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

I am probably going to be saying this a lot over the course of the next handful of months, but I just saw something truly incredible. I've been taking a fair amount of pictures that I don't know quite how to work in, so I've decided I'm going to start every blog post with a picture or two of just how stunningly beautiful this environment is.

Although I technically knew that I was coming down to Antarctica to work as support staff for the scientific research of the United States Antarctic Program, it somehow didn't fully sink in that I'm working, through one degree of separation, for the National Science Foundation. This is funny, because I've often complained about the fact that my preternatural ability to act as a magnet for scientists means that my day to day life is often dictated by science that I don't really understand. Ha. Clearly some part of me must actually enjoy this, because I have no one but myself to blame this time, and I'm LOVING hearing about the research that's going on down here.

There's a pretty stark division between the science that goes on here and all of us townsfolk who cook and clean and operate the heavy equipment that allows said science to happen. But there are definite attempts to make the research down here available to those of us contractors who want to learn about it. There are weekly science lectures, and we can go tour the labs, and sometimes we get to play with some of the scientific equipment that's not currently being used.

And some of that equipment is really, really, reaaalllllyyyy awesome. Like this thing here, which looks like one of them there tubes from Super Mario Brothers. This is the Observation Tube. And it is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. Basically, this is a 30ish foot pipe that has been drilled through the sea ice so that the bottom length of it is underneath the water.

You climb down through the tube, and there's an observation chamber at the bottom. There's only room for one person at a time, and you shut the top so that the surface light doesn't interfere with the view. It's a tight fit.

It was pretty much impossible to get a decent picture here, but this is one of the windows down in the tube. All the little white specks are krill, punctuated by the occasional jellyfish. Apparently seals sometimes come by.

The sea ice from below. I wish you could see the subtle variations better. It was pretty damn awe inspiring.

This gives you a bit of an idea of what the observation area looks like.

Yay for unused science equipment!

I'm in Antarctica!

2011-10-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hey! I'm in Antarctica!

Well. I had all these ambitions that I was going to write some sort of thoughtful summary of everything that came out of riding my bike across the country, but one thing led to another and now I am solidly in the middle of the next adventure and can’t seem to summon up much retrospective contemplation at the moment. So instead I will just briefly say—it’s been a wonderfully crazy year, and I feel extraordinarily grateful for all the marvelous adventures and partners in crime that have entered my life since I decided to throw myself out at the world to see what would step up to catch me. These past seven months feel like they’ve held at least a few years’ worth of inspiration and joy. And now I’m in Antarctica!

I’m currently writing this from the coffee shop (yes, there is a coffee shop; it also serves wine and whiskey) at McMurdo Station, where I’m working as a cook until February. It’s hard to know quite where to start in describing this place, so I’ll begin with my most frequently asked question: Why the hell did you want to work in Antarcitca?

There were a few reasons I wanted to come down. The main one was the simplest. To quote the explorer George Mallory when asked why he wanted to scale Everest: “Because it’s there.” I applied for this job while I was still riding my bike, at the time, I felt like the last thing I wanted to do was just get a day job and settle into some sort of normal living environment. So this seemed like a good middle ground. It wasn’t traveling per se, but it certainly wasn’t the anemic domesticity that I’d been living in before and that I desperately wanted to avoid returning to.

It seemed like the perfect way to experience a strange and fascinating place-and its equally strange and fascinating populace- while fostering a temporary sense of home and roots. And, after spending so much time being an itinerant painter, I was pretty excited at the prospect of a steady paycheck.

I was also curious to see how I would respond to the isolation and the weather. For those of you who know me personally, you are probably well aware of the fact that I hate the cold. Not just a little bit, but a lot bit. Kind of to the extent that it is one of my defining personality traits. Somewhere between Los Angeles and Maine, my bike ride began to foster a fascination with testing my own limits--with seeing how many second, third, and seventeenth winds I had in me. I have always been an extremely stubborn person, and I find some measure of perverse joy in putting myself in situations where I have bitten off more than I can chew and am then forced to rise to the occasion. So I figured I’d get myself to the coldest place on earth. Thus far, I’m doing fine, but it’s apparently quite warm for this time of year. It was 12 degrees when I landed, and the coldest I’ve thus far been outside for (I’ve only been here two and a half days) has been -2.

So I applied while I was on the road: I sent in my application from New Orleans, and my written interview from DC. I had my phone interview from New York, and found out that I’d got the job while in the mountains of Vermont. I’d had to hike up a ridgeline to get cell phone reception, and it somehow seemed very fitting to be doing my excited holyshiti’mgoingtoantarctica dance in that setting.

And then I came back to Seattle for two months, and completely fell in love with a city for which I’d previously harbored nothing more than grudging apathy. The universe basically slapped me in the face with all the things that I’d complained that Seattle lacked, and I left feeling like I had many things that I wanted to stick around and explore. It was certainly funny timing to be dashing off on this crazy adventure at one of the few points in my life where I was actually full of curiosity and excitement over where I already was.

Alright, enough of this rambling backstory stuff. So! Antarctica!

Actually getting down here involved a truly stunning amount of bureaucracy. I won't go into the details, but I think I probably heard at least 25 safety lectures, all of it covering the same material. I understand where they're coming from-- we are, after all, working in an environment where you can actually die of exposure quite quickly if you go out unprepared and all... Anyways, after about 3 days of lectures and informational videos in Denver, we headed out to Christchurch, NZ and were issued our cold weather gear. We are provided with everything we need for the outdoors, and out most noticeable layer is our Big Red, which, as you can see, is an enormous red parka. Everyone who works down in Antarctica is issued one of these, so at times the station looks like a pack of red penguins waddling from point A to point B.

Sitting in a lecture at the Clothing Distribution Center in Christchurch. A sea of red parkas.

We also got issued these things called Bunny Boots, which are enormous, insulated boots with valves on them so you can regulate the inner air layer. They are HUGE, and remind me of those ads for moon boots that used to be on TV when I was a kid. Anyone else know what I'm talking about? They were like little trampolines for your feet....

Here's my bunny boot next to my shoe for a size comparison.

We flew down on a military transport plane. The cargo bay was crazy loud, so we all had to wear earplugs and couldn't really have conversations.

Most people opted to just curl up in their Big Reds and go to sleep.

These are the transport vehicles down here. They all have nicknames and the insides are covered in stickers, and riding around in them makes me feel a bit like I'm in a science fiction movie and am in the infantry on some foreign planet and about to step out and wage war against strange creatures. Most things here make me feel like I'm on a foreign planet.

Antarctica is a place of contradictions. The sparse landscape is every bit as impressive and daunting as one might think, but McMurdo itself is gritty and industrial and everything that goes into actually living and working down here is... uh... well. It's not austere and romantic. It's greasy and poorly organized and slipshod and generally looks like a construction site.

A view of my home. There are a bunch of weird sculptures lying around, I'll post more pictures later.

The people down here are very much my peoples-- no one can really give a straight answer to the question of "Where are you from?" so instead everyone asks, "Where do you store your stuff?" It is lovely to be in a community where being a vagabond places you solidly in the majority. I'll write more about the people later, I have to dash off to work now. I'm working ten hour days, six days a week, so I'm kept pretty busy. Hilariously, they're serious about uniforms here, so six days a week I'm wearing an immaculately white doubled breasted chef's coat. I'm going to try to update this blog fairly regularly (heh, we'll see how that goes), but in the meantime, I would love to hear from everyone back home! Email me and say hi: tessa.hulls@gmail.com. Also, send me mail! If you write to me, I'll write back and I'll draw you pictures of strange things I encounter down here on the ice. Flat mail gets here waaayyyyyy faster than package mail, so either send two dimensional things, or use a padded mailing envelope. I can be reached at:

Tessa Hulls, NANA
McMurdo Station
PSC 469 Box 700
APO AP 96599

Inspiration

2011-08-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

While I haven't been posting, I have been thinking a lot about posting-- and I justify my lack of actual updates by saying that when I do actually post, I am going to have a lot to say. But for now, to continue with the trend of just brief updates, I recently came upon this Ira Glass quote via Lost at E Minor and wanted to share because it's an important message:

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through." — Ira Glass

Oh, That Sweet Unrest opens this Friday!

2011-08-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

Friends! I am done painting, and will soon be done with all my framing and matting. I am so excited to share this body of work with you. It is much more personal than anything I have done before, and I have to admit that makes me a bit nervous. But it's always good to push one's comfort zones, so mostly I'm just excited.

And here is my just-now-finished statement for the show:

I have always firmly believed that if you throw yourself out into the world with complete conviction, you will encounter whatever it is that you need to find. This certainly held true time and time again over the course of my bicycle ride between Southern California and Maine. When I set out on my journey, I knew that I had this show waiting for me when I returned, but had no preconceived notion of the direction the work was going to take. This series of paintings coalesced in direct response to my travels and they are very much tied to the conflicted freedom of being a body in motion.

I grew up with no friends within 20 miles, and so as a child I learned two deeply formative lessons: how to whittle away countless hours wandering by myself in the hills, and how to fall in love with books. The books that I read in my childhood have stayed with me strongly over the years, and I find myself returning to them at unexpected moments. When I first started mulling over the idea of riding my bike across the country, I found myself dwelling on Sir Pellinore from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.

Sir Pellinore was a knight whose family lineage was devoted to chasing a creature called the Questing Beast. One day he decided that he was sick of chasing it, and so he stopped. And both he and the Questing Beast became terribly depressed and were “sick with longing” for the pursuit. Pellinore’s friends and community had to come together and trick the two of them into chasing each other again so that they could both be happy. Ultimately, both Pellinore and the Beast realized that what they had seen as their obligation was actually the thing that gave their lives meaning and brought them their truest tastes of freedom and unrestrained joy.

When I set out on my journey, this story resonated with me on a very literal level: I had given up on my own restlessness and was making myself miserable in my forced complacency. So I thought of my bike and me as Pellinore (after a few thousand miles, the boundary between bike and self begins to blur), and we set off to go adventuring for our Questing Beast with no firm idea of what that Beast might be beyond a sense of hunger for the horizon.

At the end of March, I stumbled upon a second book that became the starting point for this show. I was in West Texas and had been biking through an isolated stretch of desert for about a week. I had just had the rather surreal experience of ending a long and complicated relationship over the phone while illegally camped in a cow pasture (I kept having to kick the walls of my tent to scare the inquisitive cows away) with my ears stuffed with tissue paper to drown out the noise of passing semi trucks. I spent the next day battling up ridiculously steep hills while trying not to cry because my pragmatism reminded me that tears are hugely inefficient when it’s 95 degrees out and you have to go sixty miles up a mountain before you’ll next be able to refill water. I spent two days staying with a fiddle playing astrophysicist and his family at the MacDonald Observatory, and I passed my time there nursing my emotions and bottle feeding a litter of two week old rescue kittens while rereading the family’s copy of The Wind In The Willows.

One of the things that I most enjoy about revisiting the books that I loved in my childhood is becoming aware of the layers of nuance that were invisible to me upon first reading. On the surface, The Wind In The Willows is a story about a bunch of woodland creatures cavorting about having silly adventures. But it’s also about the resolute yearning for home, and about the nebulous uncertainty and malleability of what home actually means. Rereading the book broke my heart in the most wondrous way, and there was one passage in particular that stuck with me:

`Fun?' said the Rat; `now that's just what I don't understand. If you've GOT to leave this pleasant place, and your friends who will miss you, and your snug homes that you've just settled into, why, when the hour strikes I've no doubt you'll go bravely, and face all the trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that you're not very unhappy. But to want to talk about it, or even think about it, till you really need----'

`No, you don't understand, naturally,' said the second swallow. `First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and beckon to us.'

I became fixated on this idea of sweet unrest-- of a bittersweet call to arms that is at once liberating, but also heartbreaking in all that it necessitates leaving behind. I let the phrase sink in over the course of 5,000 miles, and it marched itself through my sketchbooks gradually gaining definition as I made my way East. I painted it as a mural on the wall of a West Texas commune, and discussed it with families that had lived on the same land for five generations. As I rode, I gathered texts that spoke to the tension, built a nest of phrases that explore the contradictory desires for wanderlust and roots.

I have never known quite where I fit in the blurred boundary between fine art and illustration, and I usually choose to opt out of the artist vs. illustrator debate and instead refer to myself as a storyteller. My paintings almost always begin with a title. I get a phrase lodged in my head, and I mull it over until a visual impulse begins to coalesce: text comes first, and image follows. I have always allowed this part of my process to remain implicit, but over the course of my journey I decided to intentionally embrace the idea of text as point of origin. Each of these paintings is based on text that somehow informs my understanding of wanderlust, and the words are part and parcel of the end result.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the amazing community that I met on the road. I would like to thank all the puppeteers, computer programmers, electrical engineers, architects, street performers, musicians, astronomers, physicists, artists, deep sea welders, pawn shop owners, special agents, activists, comedians, students, lawyers, americorps volunteers, horse trainers, farmers, midwives, insurance salesmen, anarchists, retired airline pilots, bike mechanics, former Czech pop stars, massage therapists and bank tellers who shared their food, water, hammocks, string cheese, patch kits, tent space, gardens, art supplies, music, duct tape, bike jerseys, clean socks, pools, pets, children, shampoo, cultural tours, margaritas, beds in varying capacities, yoga classes, rides in cars, books, and-- above all else-- stories with me.

Over the course of the past five months, I fell back in love with the world and my place in it. I made my peace with the realization that, at least for now, the thing that I have to offer the world is my hunger. My sweet unrest. I have no idea where it’s going to carry me; I’m off to go work in Antarctica in about five weeks, and after that I’ll be traveling through New Zealand and possibly Southeast Asia. And after that....? Haven’t got the slightest clue. I don’t know what comes next, but I do know that I’m excited to meet it and cover it in paint.

Back in Seattle and painting like mad

2011-07-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks! I'm back in Seattle and have gotten myself ridiculously busy. I'll put up a real post elaborating on that sometime soon, but for now, here's what I've been up to:

My four months away from my paints certainly succeeded in pushing me in a new direction. No idea where the fluffy dresses came from.

A tragic and unexpected ending

2011-06-29T08:12:00.001-07:00

My trip came to an abrupt end yesterday. A few months back, I met the only other solo female cross country biker of my trip. Her name was Jess, and she was headed West on the same route that I was taking East. We crossed paths essentially in the midpoint of the country in a parking lot in Texas, and had an awesome evening of beer and stew and story swapping of all the times people told us we were crazy for being women traveling alone. Anyways, we kept in touch and she hooked me up with some friends to stay with on Peaks Island just off Portland, Maine.

I took the ferry over to Peaks and set out to do a lay of the land lap of the island before trying to make contact with the folks I was going to stay with. I hadn't gone very far when a girl on a beat up old cruiser bike came barreling out of a driveway without stopping to look, and more or less t-boned me. I went flying over my handlebars but managed to execute a flying roll in midair and spread the impact out pretty well upon landing.

Most importantly, both myself and the other girl were physically fine. She was really shook up and in shock, but otherwise ok, and her bike also escaped unscathed. The same cannot be said of my bike. After many years of commuting around the northwest, and almost 5,000 miles over mountains, across deserts, through sandstorms and torrential downpours, my faithful steed Pellinore has met her end.

My downtube was almost completely buckled in the middle- the angle on this picture doesn't really show how bad it was- and there was no way to save the frame.

So I did the only thing I could do: bandaged up the cuts on my hands and started salvaging parts.

I've always been a proponent of the idea that the world provides you with the lessons that you need to learn-- not to be confused with the lessons you WANT to learn-- and having to dismantle the wreckage of what has essentially been my home for four months, the one thing that has been a constant in a routine predicated on change, has afforded me an incredible opportunity to work on acceptance. At this particular moment, I am very aware of illusory nature of control, and grateful for that reminder.

It's pretty hilarious that this happened so ridiculously close to the end. To give a more concrete idea:
Miles traveled: 4903.96
Miles still to go: 108
Yup.

It also seems fitting that this happened at more or less the eastern most point of my trip. For months I lived by the cadence of easteasteast, and then by northnorthnorth, and it somehow seemed wrong to start heading southwest. I like the decisiveness of having ridden onto an island in the Atlantic, and to now be limping back inland overburdened and on foot.

Sure, I'm pretty heartbroken that this happened, and I'm having a difficult time adjusting to my abrupt loss of independence. Not to mention that I hadn't budgeted for needing to replace my bike. But on the other hand this provides a very definitive ending to a trip that I did not feel ready to end.

On the other occasions that I have embarked on long solo travels, by the end I have always felt at least somewhat ready to return to stationary life. Not this time. This is far and away the happiest and healthiest I have ever been, and the last four months have been an absolute gift of inspiration and momentum. I have been dreading this approaching conclusion. But it is time to go back, time to try to take this sense of freedom and translate it into a (temporarily) settled life.

So here I am, on a ferry with what's left of my bike in a garbage bag, winding my way to my cousin's wedding through a combination of public transit and favors from friends with cars.

I still have a lot to say, and this doesn't count as the introspective wrap up post that I know is coming. Right now I just need a few days to process. Also, those of you who know me personally know how much I hate asking for help; it's something I'm trying to work on becoming better at. If anyone feels that they have the inclination and are in a financial position to do so, I would be extraordinarily grateful for any donations to the "Tessa now needs a new bike" fund. I have been truly astounded by the support people have shown me on this journey, and believe very strongly in the power of small contributions to become more than the sum of their parts. Anyways, if anyone wants to contribute, my paypal email is Tessa.hulls@gmail.com.

Until next time....

Down to the last three days

2011-06-28T03:56:00.001-07:00

I'm in complete denial about this fact, but I only have three more days (including today) on my bike. I'm sure I'll be posting a long, contemplative end of trip rumination in the next handful of days, so for now I'm going to go ahead and ignore the fact that this almost 5,000 mile journey is coming to an end.

As some of you who have met me along the way might already know, I've been trying to get myself hired as a cook down in Antarctica. I found out about a week ago that I got the job, and now, amazingly enough, I know what I'm going to be doing for the next year+ of my life. Here's the master plan:

I also found my new home, or at least somewhere I plan on living for a while. Starting all the way back in New York, people kept telling me that I needed to check out Bread and Puppet up in Glover, Vermont. Bread and Puppet is an artist/activist community up in Northern Vermont, and I fell instantly and hopelessly in love with it when I arrived. I've spent a good chunk of the last four months mulling over the way our society views art as a commodity rather than a source of community building sustenance, and found that the good folks over at Bread and Puppet have an ideology extremely similar to my own. Here's their cheap art manifesto:

My friend Karen from White River Junction turned out to know one of the puppeteers, and while he was unfortunately out of town while I was visiting, that did mean that I got to sleep in his magical, gypsy caravan-esque schoolbus. I'll be putting up a boatload of pictures once I get images off my camera, so for now all I have is a crappy iphone picture of their puppet warehouse:

Bread and Puppet's piggies. I made myself useful on the farm while I was there, and spent the day creating garden beds and feeding weeds to the pigs.

This is only one of many taxidermed mooses (is moose already plural? meese? hmmmm) I saw in small town grocery stores while in Vermont.

I felt a bit sad when I crossed into Maine: it was the last new state line that I was going to cross, and it solidified the fact that I'm at the end of this journey. But now is not the time to start waxing preemptively nostalgic, I'll save that for a few days from now. It's amazing how similar Maine feels to the Pacific Northwest, both in terms of geography and weather. I spent two days riding in torrential downpours, and didn't really see the sun until yesterday. That said, the landscape was beautiful, and I wound my way along foggy lakes and inlets thinking about the fact that Maine's beauty feels very wild and untamed.

I met up with an old rugby friend in Vassalboro, and we took a trip out to Bar Harbor to visit her brother. Once again I neglected to take any pictures with my phone, so I'll post once I have pictures off my camera.

got stuck in New York for almost two weeks

2011-06-19T19:11:00.001-07:00

Howdy everyone. Once again, sorry for the lack of posts. My 3-4 days in New York ended up turning into almost two weeks, and since then I've been traipsing through rural areas with spotty internet. I ended up pretty thoroughly back in urban nocturnal mode while in New York. Here are some pictures that encapsulate my two weeks off my bike:

Gotta love a city where you can eat street tacos, drink on the street fairly cavalierly, and more or less not wear pants without people looking at you like you're crazy.

3 AM mango juice chugging in the name of hangover avoidance.

3 AM quesadilla scarfing also in the name of hangover avoidance.

Biking out of NYC turned out to be unexpectedly awesome, although I did do another round of unintentional mountain biking. The trail I was following disappeared into a forest, and I got myself totally covered in mud. It was pretty great!

My friend Molly gave my navigator a going away present. I'm keeping it for when I really need it.

Sadly, this place was closed when I biked by. I was really curious.

I ended up in Quechee, Vermont helping park cars at a hot air balloon festival.

I stayed with a friend of a friend in White River Junction, Vermont. She had recently started up an intentional community with a hugely ambitious series of gardens, so I put myself to good use on my rest days. I've been wanting to visit Vermont for a while, as I've always found that I get along splendidly with people from Vermont. The state completely lived up to my expectations, and I managed to garden and jump in a river every day that I was there.

Interview is up!

2011-06-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Howdy everyone. I've been in New York for.... jeez, almost a week now. Time just rushes on by here, and I've been having a really incredible time hanging out with artists and musicians and generally getting to feel totally surrounded by an insane, vibrant creative community. I've been working on some of the art responsibilities that I've been ignoring on this trip, and so I have art news to post about.

I recently was asked to participate in an extremely awesome project being orchestrated by New York journalist Gaby Dunn. Gaby made a list of 100 people she's never had a conversation with-- it's a diverse list, including someone who pickets at abortion clinics, a one hit wonder, someone who has been left at the alter, Stephen Colbert, and a whole lot more-- and I was very happy to be #49: Someone with a gallery showing of their art. Check out the interview here!

Finally another round of pictures

2011-06-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

Grave marker in the desert.

Weird sculpture out in West Texas. The carapace is an old chainsaw.

I went to a really bizarre place called the Museum of Ephemerata while I was in Austin. This is a memorial necklace of woven hair from the early 1900's.

Collection of strange taxidermy, also at the Museum of Ephemerata.

New Orleans

This telephone pole has clearly been home to many, many fliers.

New Orleans

Biking along the Gulf Coast. Absolutely stunning. Hit some awesome tailwinds and just soared along the beach for 20 miles.

This place was amazing! The name pretty much says all. I ate two different kinds of pie for breakfast: peach and goat cheese pie is, it turns out, fabulous.

Tornado damage in Tuscaloosa.

More Tuscaloosa. Huge portions of the city looked like this for as far as you could see.

Silver Comet bike trail between Georgia and Atlanta. Awesome!

Pretty barn.

It seems the ivy is winning.

My favorite time of day to ride is early in the morning before all the mist has cleared.

I would love to know the story behind this.

Crazy dam I biked over.

My friend Claire's wonderful family. We had a delicious salmon dinner and apple pie.

4,075!

2011-06-01T08:32:00.001-07:00

For a while back at the beginning of my trip, my bike computer had developed the obnoxious habit of resetting itself to all the factory presets. This meant I lost my cumulative mileage, and it was resetting often enough that I stopped bothering to reprogram the odometer. Back in Texas it somehow spontaneously fixed itself, and has been completely reliable ever since. Thus morning I was curious to see how far I've actually gone, so I busted out the paper log I'd been keeping in my sketchbook and did some math.

4,075 miles!

I thought I was getting close to 4,000 but didn't think I'd quite hit it yet. Anyways, as a reward, I decided that instead of biking 38 miles through New Jersey traffic, I would take the train into New York City.

Gotta say, it feels pretty decadent.

I took a detour up to Montclair, NJ to visit my friend Cole. We met on the crazy commune in West Texas, and he's one of the three people with whom I now share a tattoo of the constellation Orion. It was really lovely seeing a travel friend in his native environment, and we will see each other again in a few months because he's moving to Portland.
I forgot to take a picture of us, but we did take a picture of our tattoos to send to the other member of our triad.

That's my calf and cole's arm, kinda hard to tell. Cole still has a pretty fierce biking tan.

I managed to go 2,000 miles without a flat tire but my streak ended this week. I got two flats, both of which turned out to be caused by almost invisibly small pieces of metal that I had to pull out of my tires with pliers.

Yup, that little thing that looks like an eyelash is enough to bring me to an obnoxious standstill. So cars, while I dislike it when you roll down your windows and blare on your horns and yell at me about the extra six inches of room I should be riding in, I find the experience preferable to riding through metal shavings and gravel that give me innumerable flats.

Horse farm!

2011-05-29T20:04:00.001-07:00

I crossed into Pennsylvania yesterday and had only gone about two miles before seeing my first Amish horse drawn wagon.

The scenery here is absolutely beautiful, although bucolic rolling hills are way more fun to look at than ride over. They're deceptively steep around these parts.

I passed this gorgeous old mill house on this morning's ride.

So after going down an extremely steep gravel hill, I got to a sign warning me that the road was closed 1000 yards ahead. I decided to continue down the hill, assuming that whatever meant closed to a car would be navigable by bike.
That turned out to be... True, but only because I am extremely stubborn. Turns out there was an only partially finished bridge over a river, so I did the only natural thing and carried my bike over the construction barrier, and then took my saddlebags off and carried everything down the construction scaffolding. It takes a lot to stop a determined bicycle!

Now I'm staying with a friend's family on their awesome horse farm!

Location:Downingtown Pike,West Chester,United States

2011-05-28T10:25:00.001-07:00

I have a new least favorite activity: trying to bike north out of DC. Particularly at rush hour on the Friday of a holiday weekend. I had plans to just casually put in a half day of riding and get myself out of the suburbs, but I ended up completely mired in urban traffic and made painfully slow progress. But! I finally made it to the outskirts and saw an ale house, and decided that beer and fish and chips would greatly improve my day.

I ended up meeting two hilarious cousins, both named Buck, who let me stay at their house. They were preparing for their 10th annual epic memorial day crab feed, and had an array of festive hats for the occasion. It was very tempting to stick around til Sunday for the festivities, as crab is pretty much my favorite thing in the world, but I still have too much restless momentum.

The two Bucks.

Why can't they just come out and say speed bump?

Pretty series of locks that I biked on in my attempt to get out of DC. Would have liked them more if they hadn't carried me west instead of northeast...

I imagine the conversation that led to spotsylvania went something like this:
"Hey! This is a nice spot, we should make a town here."
"Yeah! It is a nice spot. We can name it Spotsville."
"That sounds silly, we want something more imposing, more... exotic."
"How about Spotsylvania?"

2011-05-22T19:54:00.001-07:00

I've crossed a few more state lines (states are just so close together this side of the Mississippi!) and am in the lovely town of Carrboro, North Carolina. The folks I'm staying with took me to an incredible salad bar, where I proceeded to eat a pile of greens far larger than my head. The rest of the afternoon was then spent with bloody marys, beet pizza, and the Sunday New York Times. I had gone 65 miles that morning, but had so much lazy resting that it felt like I'd been off my bike for days.

South Carolina

And then north Carolina the next day.

This picture doesn't really show just how pretty the morning fog was.

Location:Aberdeen Dr,Chapel Hill,United States

Whale sharks!

2011-05-17T18:25:00.001-07:00

I took a day off my bike in Atlanta to wander around and visit the aquarium. At first I was totally overwhelmed by the million and a half schoolchildren, so I found a nice corner by the big tank and sat around drawing weird fish until they all had to get back in their buses and go away. Far and away the best thing at the aquarium were the whale sharks. Sorry I don't have a better picture-

2011-05-15T16:07:00.001-07:00

I continued on the magical Silver Comet trail today and am now in Atlanta. I passed through this awesome tunnel on the bike trail- the next few days of riding are going to be a letdown after this stretch of the route!

Oh Waffle House I love you and your absurdly large portions and chili smothered hash browns. There is something satisfying about eating a breakfast that comes on three plates. Makes me feel like a good American.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:14th St NW,Atlanta,United States

2011-05-14T16:51:00.001-07:00

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted... Being an artist involves a lot of maintaining an online identity, and one of my favorite things about being on vacation is being able to allow that identity to lapse. And by extension, I end up shirking blogging duties, too. But! I am resolving to do better about updates.

I've been crossing state lines like a crazy person, and have been going close to 100 miles most days of late. In the past week I crossed three state lines:

I was in Mississippi for less than 24 hours. Not much to say about it except that I was introduced to the beauty that is Waffle House. You can get a breakfast that I swear must have 4,000 calories in it. Even my crazy appetite has a hard time finishing.

I went up to Tuscaloosa to visit my friend Claire, and I can't even begin to describe how bad the tornado damage is. Ive never seen anything like it. I went out with my camera and hopefully got some good shots, will post/write more about that when I'm on a computer instead of on an iPhone in my tent.

The route between Alabama and Georgia was SO AWESOME!!!! there is a dedicated bike trail that runs about 80 miles, and it goes through some really lovely scenery. Being on a path just for bikes feels like the height of decadence after some of the roads I've been on lately (Louisiana's roads are appallingly beat up).

Pretty path!

Pretty flowers!

I had a pretty crazy bike malfunction a few days ago-- managed to get my rear derailleur stuck in my spokes, which was entirely my own fault because if my limit screws had been well adjusted, that would have been impossible. Anyways, my derailleur was just a mangled chunk of metal and my bike was rendered unrideable, so I hitched a ride to the next town with a bike shop. Paul, the guy who picked me up, was an underground coal miner and I learned all sorts of fascinating things about coal mining. Such a crazy world! Sounds like an alternate universe down there.
The bike shop I ended up at (Cahaba Cycles) was super ridiculously awesome, and it was far and away the most positive interaction I've had with a bike shop since I started this trip. I don't know why it is that bike mechanics are often assholes, but it's really just something you come to accept/expect if you're someone who frequents bike shops, especially if you are female. I'm by no means a bike mechanic, but I know how to keep my bike in working order and fix most things that go wrong with it, and it irritates me that walking into a bike shop often means getting talked down to. These guys were an extremely pleasant exception Here's a list of reasons why they were awesome:
1. They didn't treat me like an idiot or give me shit about managing to mangle my bike in such a dumb and avoidable way
2. They gave me a sweet jersey
3. They didn't charge for labor
4. Their mechanics were cute AND nice, which I sort of didn't think was possible- it's like having a horse and a narwhal, and having them somehow combine to form a unicorn; you always wished that it could happen, but had reconciled yourself to the impossibility (also, I have decided that all blog posts should really contain at least one unnecessary reference to unicorns).
5. I noticed later that they put a pink end cap on my cable to match my housing and grip tape! Zack the mechanic, if you ever end up in Seattle I totally owe you a beer for that one.
Annnywaaayyssss, my bike is now back to happy working order, and I'm getting into Atlanta tomorrow. Until next time!

Pie!

2011-05-13T09:43:00.001-07:00

I love encountering random pie shops in the middle of rural Alabama.

More funny tan lines

2011-04-25T11:29:00.001-07:00

Hello all! Too start you off, here is a picture of my sweet biker glove tan. It's not too bad now, but I imagine in a few more months it will be spectacular.

I crossed into Louisiana a few days ago and was instantly impressed by two things: 1. There is an incredible amount of roadkill and 2. Any road that is not a major highway is in god awful condition

I passed through the town of Deridder, which is apparently the per capita church capitol of the nation.

I just got into baton rouge and will be in new Orleans either tomorrow or the next day depending on whether I take tomorrow off. I hope my liver is up for it....

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:U.S. 61 Business,Baton Rouge,United States

In my tent behind the nation's oldest baptist church

2011-04-19T16:56:00.001-07:00

I'm in Independence and am starting to wonder if I will ever make it out of Texas. This state has been lovely, but I am itching to cross a state line... I think I'll make it to Louisiana in four days.

I'm still catching up with Austin pictures-- check out how many people show up for their Thursday night social rides!

So this picture didn't really turn out, but I'm posting it as evidence that Lindsey does indeed live in Austin, and that I did indeed go see her.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

New toy!

2011-04-14T12:46:00.001-07:00

I sent my warm weather gear back to Seattle last week, and decided that meant that the only logical thing to do was to buy a ukulele because my bike felt weirdly empty. So now I just need to learn to play it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Lots of pictures for your viewing pleasure

2011-04-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

Howdy everyone! I'm in Austin, Texas and am absolutely loving this city so far. I am pretty sure I'm going to move here whenever I next feel like being semi stationary. I've been staying with friends and couchsurfing, so I figure I have no excuse for not doing an actual update on the trip.

I've been in Texas for quite some time now-- takes a looonnnngggg while to bike across this state-- and have been really enjoying pretty much everything about it. People are extremely friendly, and everyone does exactly what they want: it's a really great blend of hospitality and fierce independence, coupled with a healthy dollop of straight up quirkiness. To give you an example of what I'm talking about, Texas is the first state I've been in that has a sense of humor with it's roadsigns. Instead of just the usual "Don't litter" highway signs, Texas has signs that say things like:

Don't mess with Texas-- don't litter!

Keep taxes down-- don't litter!

Wouldn't this money be better for education?

Littering is unlAWFUL

It's a small touch, but Texas is full of things like that. Also I have seen way more roadkill armadillos than I ever needed to. They sort of look like broken eggs, because their shells remain intact but the inside is just... umm... pulpy.

Anyways, here are a bunch of pictures not at all in chronological order.

Roadside memorial. I have seen well over 100 of these. It's a little sobering, but some of them are also really beautiful.

Abandoned gas station sign.

These. Are. The. Bane. Of. My. Existence. So many flats from these guys. I was SOOOOOOOO happy to get out of thorn country.

Another abandoned gas station. For some reason I really love abandoned gas stations. Something about the decay of roadside Americana gives me chills and inspires me.

Crossing over the edge of Lake Amistad after weeks of completely parched desert. It was shocking to see so much water in one place, it seemed like such an excess of what I realized I've been starting to think of as a rare commodity.

Best car ever.

I love the way the desert weathers metal.

More worn down metal.

Hood of a car.

Big Bend National Park! Looks like an alien landscape, right?

More Big Bend.

More Big Bend. That's my friend Ben standing on the ridge. I'm kind of mad at him right now because we got to talking about the weird songs that get stuck in our heads while biking, and it's his fault that now every time I have to do a hill climb, I start singing George Michael's "Faith"

More Big Bend .

So I ended up on a crazy commune in Marathon, Texas. There isn't really anyone in charge-- just one person who technically owns the property but refuses to really own up to that fact, and encourages people passing through to do whatever moves them. I told him I was an artist and he said I should paint something while I was there, and that I should pick a surface that spoke to me, and this very large wall was just calling my name. I had an amazing time getting off my bike for 4 days and painting and hanging out with a bunch of fascinatingly crazy people, and I hope to go back to this place.

Handprint for the road.

Yet another abandoned desert car.

It's hard to really see what's going on here, but this is a meditation room. There's a dome built on top of it, and then the chamber is dug into the ground.

Can sort of see more what I'm talking about in this picture.

Finished mural. I didn't paint the right side because the roof was sketchy there.

This is pretty much what my days look like. Just me and my bike and an enormous horizon. It's awesome.

My kitty navigator. He gets me where I need to go. And keeps me company.

This pass was absolutely crazy beyond all point of reason. If you look closely you can see that the road up the mountain is a series of switchbacks. So steep. I had to really coax myself up this one, lots of pep talks/cursing/making up silly stories to distract myself. But the view from the top! So gorgeous.

William's garden.

Silver City, NM was full of art galleries! It was awesome!

Yay street art.

Gee, another abandoned roadside cafe.

Mile marker.

Produce!!!'

2011-04-10T12:11:00.001-07:00

I'm in Austin and staying with friends for a whole week and am excited beyond all point of reason to have access to a kitchen and fridge. Yay produce!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Oh Texas I like the way you think

2011-04-10T06:38:00.001-07:00

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-04-04T10:30:00.001-07:00

I ended up on a crazy... Well, I guess commune is the closest word I can come up with and ended up staying a handful of days and painting a mural.

Crazy wind over the pecos! It was beautiful though, so strange to see water!

Want to help support my trip? Buy prints of my paintings-- www.etsy.com/shop/growmeaboat

Staying at an amazing place

2011-03-20T14:54:00.001-07:00

Silver city New Mexico is a hippie enclave in the last place you would ever expect to find one. I'm staying with an old hippie named William who lives in a house that runs on solar energy, and he has an incredible co op greenhouse in his back yard.

The greenhouse.

Angel, williams fat cat.

Want to help support my trip? Buy prints of my paintings-- www.etsy.com/shop/growmeaboat

Location:N Texas St,Silver City,United States

Crossed state line number two today

2011-03-19T19:34:00.001-07:00

Crossed into new mexico just after sunrise this morning.

It was a brutal climb up the pass from Arizona-- 6,250 feet straight up, there were definitely moments when I wondered why the hell I decided to do this-- but the views were incredible.

I'm going to be posting some real photos (as in not just from my phone) whenever I next take a rest day, and I'm excited to share some of the shots I've managed to get. I decided to bring my good art documenting camera in spite of its extra weight and bulk, so I've been trying to do some real photo taking to justify carrying it...

Want to help support my trip? Buy prints of my paintings-- www.etsy.com/shop/growmeaboat

Location:N F St,Silver City,United States

Just went up this hill

2011-03-16T13:26:00.001-07:00

You can't really tell how steep this is but see that almost invisible valley down there? Yeah. That was fun. Oh, and the temperature broke 100 degrees for the first time on my trip.

Want to help support my trip? Buy prints of my paintings-- www.etsy.com/shop/growmeaboat

Location:Superior,United States

Desert sunset

2011-03-14T07:22:00.001-07:00

Want to help support my trip? Buy prints of my paintings-- www.etsy.com/shop/growmeaboat

Location:9 Irons Rch Rd,Wickenburg,United States

Crossed my first state line

2011-03-12T18:48:00.001-08:00

You can't really tell but this says Arizona

This ladybug stayed on my leg for 30 miles

Wonder what incident prompted the necessity of this sign...?

Want to help support my trip? Buy prints of my paintings-- www.etsy.com/shop/growmeaboat

4 wheeler Capitol of the world

2011-03-11T10:54:00.001-08:00

This is the only establishment of any sort for thirty miles in either direction. By sand toys they mean 4 runners. Im eating a giant pickle and can of beans before heading back into the desert.

Postin from my fancy phone!

2011-03-10T14:51:00.001-08:00

Hello all! I'm currently sitting in a police station (charging my phone, not because I got in trouble for having shorts that are too flamingly bright pink) in el centro California. I'm about 120 miles outside of San Diego and it's been a crreaaaazzzzyyyyy few days of extremely steep climbs. I went up 4000 feet averaging about 3 miles an hour because it was seriously that steep and there were insane headwinds.

I coincidentally ran into two awesome folks going the same route as me, so we joined forces for the last few days. Anyways, I know that all anyone ever wants is pictures and this tiny typing is annoying, so here--

My faithful steed at Redondo Beach. It neglected to go swimming.

My failure to effectively apply sunscreen. I put sunscreen on three times this day! My theory is that since my Seattle skin has seen no sun in a season (yay alliteration), there was simply no avoiding it.

See that big fence in the background? That's the mexican border. My route took me about 150 yards away from it. There are lots of helicopters all the time.

A guy by the side of the road was selling avocados 5 for a dollar. Clearly the only thing to be done was to fill my handlebar bag with them.

The road we were on today was full of potholes like woah. Funny thing is, the locals told us we were super lucky because it had just been fixed last year and was in great shape. This is what my hands looked like after 20 miles on this crazy bumpy road. My head kinda feels all shaken up too.

3 days til depature

2011-02-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

Whew, it's been a busy busy week on my end-- I swapped out pretty much every portion of my bike to prepare it for its 3,000 mile journey, added nine new prints to my etsy shop, finished some pieces for a group show I'm participating in while traveling (yay for doing things in abstentia), packed up my art studio, finished writing up an interview I conducted with Justin Kane Elder, and was extremely flattered to have some really lovely posts on a number of art blogs I respect and admire. You can take a peek here at Lost at E Minor, Pattern Pulp, and Hard Feelings.

I'm most excited to have been mentioned on My Love For You Is A Stampede Of Horses-- I have had a huge art crush on them forever, so it means a lot to me that they liked my stuff!

Annyywayyss, it's been busy, but good busy, and I am really, really ready to spend four months with nothing that needs doing except hopping on my bike and biking about 50 miles every day. And, dear friends, I think I might have decided to relent-- I think I'm going to bring a small watercolor set with me. But only a little one. With one brush. It's strange to have all my paints and brushes boxed up; the thought of not touching them until July is too strange to wrap my head around.

I realized I haven't done a great job of posting images lately, so here are some pictures of some smaller pieces I've done in the last month or so. I've been wanting to devote my time to working on large scale projects, but haven't been able to with all my last minute preparations, so I've mostly been working small.

Print project is up, go forth and purchase!

2011-02-21T20:18:00.000-08:00

Alright folks, my print project is up and ready for your buying pleasure! I have decided to call it The Wanderlust Project. Prints are available through my etsy shop (Yes, that's right! I finally, after 3+ years of procrastination, opened an etsy shop. Better late than never!).

2 weeks 'til departure

2011-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

I'm two weeks away from leaving on my trip and it seems like time is going by ridiculously fast! I'm in the process of cleaning out my studio and trying to pare down the really amazing amount of extraneous scraps of paper I have collected over the years. I generally am someone that is good at getting rid of unnecessary possessions, but my weakness is paper-- if it has an interesting pattern or a fun image or just a nice weight or tooth, I huck it in my drafting table draw and justify carrying it around for the next five years. Anyways, I'm hopefully (fingers crossed!) subletting my art studio while I'm gone, so I'm trying to clean to A. free up storage space for the artist who will be using my space, and B. avoid horrific embarrassed over someone else actually seeing my total lack of organization.

I'm alllmmmooossttt done with the travel print project I posted about last week, am planning on heading to my studio after finishing this mug of tea and adding in the last line of text. Also on the agenda is another to do list item I've been procrastinating on for at least a year-- I'm going to draw a banner for this blog, and for my hopefully-soon-to-be-open etsy shop. So many little things to do!

I just had a few pieces posted over at Supersonic Electronic, a super fun illustration and street art centric blog. I really like the work they generally showcase, so I'm happy to be featured! In other art updates, the group show over at Bherd Studios is up through March 9th, and there's some really awesome work that is well worth seeing. The opening happened to coincide with my very last day of work at my day job, so I was in as fantastic mood to begin with, and then someone bought my giant piece so I was basically a giddy panda!

Here's a picture of the piece that sold-- I posted some pictures of it as a work in progress a while back, but here it is finished... Normally I don't get hugely attached to paintings, but I worked on this one for so long (three months on and off, maybe?) that it is hard to let it go. That and it's a convoluted self portrait in a lot of ways, so I feel like I ended up a lot closer to this one that usual.

Anyways, if you find yourself up in Greenwood neighborhood, go take a peek at the show.

Oookkeeee, off to my studio! Hopefully hopefully hopefully I will have images of the print project posted tomorrow.

Been busy beyond all point of reason

2011-02-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

Howdy everyone. It's been a while between updates, and that's because I have been absurdly busy prepping for upcoming shows and getting things in order to leave town for 4 months.

I'm leaving Seattle in about three weeks to ride my bike across the country! I'm flying myself (and my faithful steed) down to southern California and am going to be biking from San Diego to somewhere in Florida. If you have friends in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and possibly Georgia, I am actively looking for couches, floors or yards to sleep in. I'm also extremely interested in checking out art and artists along the way, so if you know of any artist colonies, intentional communities, enclaves of treehouses, or anything generally strange and at the margins, do let me know.

I've been working on a series of paintings that incorporate some of my favorite book passages about travel and wanderlust, and am going to be selling a limited print run to partially fund my trip. I'm **hoping** to have everything up and running for the prints to go on sale next week. More on that later, but for now here in a sneak peek of the first print, the text is from an essay by Barbara Kingsolver.

In other announcements, big thanks to everyone who came out to my opening at Monster and made the show such a great success. I'm happy to report that every piece in the show sold! In large part that is why I have been a bit incommunicado on the blog front-- I've been in my studio finishing paintings for XX: A Tribute to the Female Chromosomes, a group show opening next Friday at Bherd Studios. It's an all ladies show featuring work from myself, 179, Jenn Brisson, Sly Cooley, Devon Urquhart and Redd Walitzki.

And here's a sneak peek at one of the pieces in the show. I've been slowly but surely creeping up to working on a larger scale, this will be the first time I'm showing some of my larger pieces.

Opening this Saturday at Monster, delicious dumplings, a mural

2011-01-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Getting anything productive done during the Thanksgiving-New Year holiday corridor is more or less impossible. It's like six weeks are just lost to the Bermuda Triangle. Somehow, in spite of feeling like time has been slipping away, I have managed to make all sorts of new paintings during the last few months, and I'm going to show them all to you this Saturday! I'll be showing my new works at Monster Art and Clothing as part of the Ballard art walk, and there will be catered snacks, a guest aerialist, and general shennanigans all around.

I'm also currently showing with Justin Kane Elder at newly opened restaurant Revel/Quoin in Fremont. Here are a few reasons to go check it out:
1. The bar makes an amazing Manhattan
2. The architecture is beautiful
3. Justin's work is incredible and you will be totally in awe of the fact that it is all spraypaint
4. DUMPLINGS! RIDICULOUSLY DELICIOUS DUMPLINGS! Granted I am biased because dumplings are pretty much a religious experience in my book, but seriously go eat them.

In other art updates, I'm hopefully going down to Portland next week to paint a mural. It's been a looooonnnngggg time since I last worked on a mural, and I'm super excited at the prospect of working on a large scale again! There's something extremely satisfying about painting directly on a wall and creating something that interacts so directly with viewers.

Woo hoo painkiller stupor!

2010-12-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

I sprained my ankle at my open studio last week-- surprisingly it did not happen during the dance party or pullup contest, but rather while I was walking down my hallway. My pride was hurt just as much as my ankle, and I have been sprawled on my couch working my way through my friend's leftover vicodan stash (thanks Rebeccar! You're the best!) while absent mindedly sketching out some new pieces.

I have some pieces opening at Urban Light Studio's 2nd Anniversary group show tomorrow night, looks like it's going to be a solid lineup and a lot of fun!

In other news, I recently interviewed Stacey Rozich (one of my absolute favorite Seattle artists!) for Redefine Magazine. We were both really happy with how the interview came out, it turns out we have boatloads of common interests and motivations, including a deep and abiding love of detailed Eastern European folk garb. Check out the interview here!

It seems like my work has been going in a bit of a new direction of late, and I'm excited to see where the series I'm currently working is going to end up. To give you an idea of this aesthetic shift, here's a work in a progress peek of the giant painting I've been working on for... er... a really long time now:

Interview on Proxart Blog

2010-11-10T09:09:00.001-08:00

I recently chatted with the folks over at Proxart magazine about my work, you can read the interview here.

2010-10-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

I've got a bunch of things lined up in the next couple months and have been locked in my studio a lot of late. Here's a sneak peek, I've been using lots of triangles of.

A more designy project

2010-10-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a rather disparate assortment of projects of late and have been doing some more design-based work than usual. Here's a peek at a poster design I just finished for 826 Seattle.I had a lot of fun working in an intentionally childish style. My color palette a few years leaned heavily towards bright blues and oranges, and I made myself intentionally move towards more muted tones because I wasn't happy with the way my color choices made everything I made seem cartoonish. That said, I'm still extremely drawn to crazy bright colors (one of my studio walls is painted a lovely color named Tequila Sunrise), so it was nice to have a project where wince-worthy hues were totally in keeping with the style I was going for.

Right now I'm also working on a somewhat secretive project. I've always wanted to delve more into comics and graphic novels, and I'm making a comic book for my friend's really awesome project that you should submit to. I'm a little worried I'm not going to finish in time because I have a lot on my plate at the moment, but all I did manage to use this project to justify buying myself the complete Calvin and Hobbes boxed set as "reference material." Turns out that was an extremely unproductive idea because now I'm re-reading the entirety of Calvin and Hobbes to procrastinate on all my painting deadlines.

Running with this Russian fairytale theme

2010-10-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

I just finished this piece a few days ago, not quite sure what's going on in it, but it seems like even more of a straight illustration than most of my stuff. I think I'm writing a story but have yet to figure out what the plot is.

A sadly destroyed fishie

2010-09-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

Things have been a little nuts on this end of late-- a whole crew of us went to Burning Man this year and our projects took on a life of their own, so I was more or less out of commission on painting for all of August. I spent probably 40 hours making a 7 foot long angler fish suit, and was really, really pleased with how it turned out. But then on the drive down to the burn it rained for 12 hours straight, and no amount of tarps proved to be enough to protect my fishie. It was sadly destroyed by the time we got there. Its tattered remnants are in my basement, and I'm hoping to fix it back up for Halloween, but I'm still a little too sad about the state it is currently in. Here's how I made it and what it looked like before its untimely demise:

Phase 1: I took an old external frame boyscout backpack that I'd found in a free pile and stitched little pockets to insert PVC into. I used bailing wire to create a rough frame for my body, then used wood glue and parchment vellum to start making my skin.

Phase two: The skin was pretty much on, I built up more layers of wood glue and paper and eventually switched to elmers glue (I went through almost 3/4 of a gallon on this project....) because I needed it in bulk. I added a rough coat of tissue paper to start creating the colors I wanted.

Phase three: The skin was on, I'd attached a tail, and started being more attentive to detail in the patterns of my scales. Here I am taking it for a test stroll on our street, you can see the fangs of Bill's amazing pterodactyl bike (I'll post pictures of that later) on the right.

Phase four: I cut out each scale and individually applied it. This might sound like a masochistic amount of work, and you would be right to think that, but the ultimate effect when the fish was lit (did I mention that the whole fish is a lantern? Like I said, I got a little carried away) was totally worth it.

Phase five: Late stage test run. Fins and flippers are on, wiffle ball eyes are applied.

Phase 6: Testing my fangs! Bill and Andy and I all hand soldered all the LEDs for our costumes. Later we discovered that there are basically LED christmas tree lights that one can buy that would have made out lives about a million times easier, but we became pretty damn adept with our soldering by the end of it, so I'm actually fairly happy we went the labor intensive route.

And this, my friends, is the final product with little dangly front light and all. To tell you the truth looking at this picture makes me a little sad. Sigh. Oh well! I will fix it for Halloween and it will have its moment to shine (quite literally).

I have a few other random things I've been working on of late. I was going to post them now but all this talk of my fish has left me wanting/needing a beer.

Some pictures from the Summer Streets collaboration

2010-08-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the mural we ended up painting for the summer streets collaboration. We all had a lot of fun painting together, I was a little nervous about using brushes when everyone else was using spraypaint, but it worked out just fine.

New website is up and running!

2010-08-14T15:19:00.003-07:00

Exciting news, everyone! My revamped website is up and running. Go check it out:

www.tessahulls.com

Check out my interview with Jeremy Mangan

2010-08-03T21:27:00.001-07:00

I've been doing some arts blogging for Redefine Magazine for a while now, and I've just started conducting interviews, too. I just had the opportunity to talk to the amazingly talented artist Jeremy Mangan, take a peek here!

Expect very little of me for the next few weeks...

2010-07-26T19:27:00.001-07:00

I have started a truly epic costume project. Cryptic, yes? Muhahahaha!

I have finished my leaping kitty exodus!

2010-07-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

I finnnallllyyyyy finished this painting and am really please with how it turned out. I changed my mind a number of times on this one, I think I completely repainted the sky at least 3 very different colors. I also am full of the warm fuzzy feeling of being a well behaved, dedicated working artist because I was inside painting in my studio on this gorgeous sunny day. This piece is exponentially larger than anything I've done lately (probably something like 16"x26", which is still pretty small when it comes right down to it), and I very much enjoyed having so much paper to wander on. But dear god this painting took forever. I really, really need to get a decent camera for documenting some of these larger pieces-- the detail images show up fine, but I can't for the life of me get an acceptable photograph of the whole thing. If anyone out there has a nice camera and wants to barter some photography for prints or delicious baked goods.... Anyways, without further ado, here is The Leaping Kitty Exodus.

Something a little different

2010-07-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

I just finished up this project for a friend's wedding. She has 21 (terrifying, right?) children coming to her wedding, so this is a coloring book to entertain them with.

Frustrating work in progress

2010-06-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

I've been toying around with this painting for a while now and it's been giving me all sorts of trouble. I think it's almost done, but am not quite sure what else I need to do to it for it to feel finished.

Puppets!

2010-06-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some pictures of the puppets I've been working on. This is my kitty, he's also a little bit like a sea monster. Base coat is on, still needs a lot of detail work. I also ended up having to add in a few extra leg joints, so he's still very much a work in progress. I'm really excited that quinacridone magenta is starting to creep its way back into my color palette. I got myself pretty burned out on it a few years ago (it's an intense color and tends to dominate any and every other paint it's mixed with), but I love how crazy saturated it looks and have been trying to find a way to reintroduce it in my work.

This is how the puppet is put together on the back. Bill figured out most of the logistics in terms of where to put the joints, and he had the brilliant idea to use rubber bands as springs so the limbs spring back into position. The joints are made with 2mm machine screws, and the strings are routed through really tiny eyelets. Detail of joints. Here's another puppet in progress. Not sure how I'm going to paint this one, still undecided as to whether Mr. Chicken will be wearing a dapper vest/costume, or just have feathers. I also have no idea what I'm making these for, I figure once we have enough put together, a puppet show will more or less write itself.
Also, here's a work in progress shot of a big piece I'm working on. I'm really excited about these sea monster kitty creatures that seems to be making their way into my work!

Come to our Backyard Spectacular!

2010-05-28T09:29:00.001-07:00

I've been working on all sorts of things of late, I have just been neglecting to take any pictures of my projects. I promise I will post pictures soon, I've been making puppets! I have a mostly completed sea monster kitty, a gessoed and ready to paint chicken, and a rhinoceros in progress. I am having some trouble with the rhino because every time I try to draw his face he ends up looking like a triceratops. Which, I guess, is actually pretty damn close to a rhino. Anyways, I'm sure I'll work it out somehow.
But today I am posting to show you the flier I made last night. If you live in the Seattle area, do come on over for our Backyard Spectacular. My friend Teddy wrote an awesome play, and we'll be performing it at dusk for your viewing pleasure. I was going for an Edward Gorey theme in this poster, but I think that's pretty self evident. A special thanks to this guy who made the awesome Gorey font! I've always admired Gorey's handwriting.

Just plain ink

2010-04-27T15:36:00.001-07:00

I don't have any big deadlines or shows coming up, so I've been putzing around on a few random things here and there. I just finished this ink piece and it was really nice to work with a pen on something I never had any intention of coloring. Don't get me wrong, I love painting, but I also really love the level on control that a pen affords.

A few pictures from my trip

2010-04-20T10:42:00.001-07:00

Cloud forest after a very vertical hike.
Really ugly duck. We asked the owners why they kept them (they're grumpy and not tasty), and they said, "For breeding," and then we asked, "Er, but why would you want more?" And they didn't really have a good answer. They wiggle their butts when they're aggressive.
These swimming holes are pools formed by a hydroelectric dam, I just jumped off the waterfall, you can kinda see my feet sticking out of the water.
Bill and me drenched after trekking through waterfalls.

Sketchy suspension bridge. We met a vietnam vet here who was driving an old 1940's jeep, he had a bottle opener mounted on the dashboard of his card and even though it was maybe 11 in the morning, he was too drunk to open his beer. Funny man.
Little doggie topiary sculpture!
These swimming holes are connected by a series of tunnels, you can move in between two different waterfalls by wading through neck high water, and there are a few points where you have to go completely underwater and have faith that there will be enough head space to breath on the other side. Apparently someone dies every handful of years because they go down the wrong tunnel and end up at the dam.
Pretty waterfall.
Hot springs. You had to walk through a cave to get to the springs, it was a bit sketchy because you had to jump over a series of little rocks in the middle of pools of boiling water.

New pieces for Art House Co-op's Scavenger Project

2010-04-20T10:33:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,
I'm back from my travels and have been in the studio working on a series of pieces for Art House Co-Op's Scavenger Project. I also currently have a piece showing at Ghost Gallery through the end of April.

Sorry for the lack of posts, I am in El Salvador eating mangoes and playing in waterfalls

2010-03-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

Title pretty much says all. I brought some sketchbooks, but to be perfectly honest I haven{t really drawn a thing, I{ve been too busy sitting in hammocks and eating lots of avocados and jumping in various waterfalls, lakes and beaches. I{ll try to draw tropical things when I get back.

I'm featured on Illustrativo!

2010-03-17T09:20:00.001-07:00

I submitted a piece a while back to my absolute-most-favorite-in-the-whole-wide-world illustration blog and this morning I was pleasantly surprised to sit down with my coffee and open my inbox to see my piece featured.

Thanks for coming out to the show

2010-03-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
Thanks for coming out for the super fun show at Urban Light Studios, I had a great time and met a bunch of really awesome artists! Bherd Studios had a super fun group show up featuring John Osgood, PaperMarbles, and Jeremy Gregory (I really, really wanted to art barter with him, I love his stuff! He draws great whiskers.), and I got to have super nerdy conversations about tiny paintbrushes and paper weight.
The Phinneywood blog had a nice picture and a mention of the show, and Redefine Magazine also wrote a little bit about it.

Here are a few pictures of the opening:

Solo show tomorrow night!

2010-03-11T16:41:00.001-08:00

Come on by! I just finished hanging everything and am super pleased with how it all came together. Tomorrow, Friday March 12th, Urban Light Studios @ 8537 Greenwood Ave North, 6-10ishpm, drinks and live music and giant taxidermed lion provided.

The Censored Garden

2010-03-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

I came across this piece by Taravat Talepasand and haven't been able to get it out of my head.

A few new pieces

2010-03-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

I'm only posting a few things because I want the pieces for this Friday's show to be a surprise, but here are few recently completely paintings.

Death Bear

2010-03-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

I'm generally not a huge fan of a lot of performance art, but I really love this project. Maybe it's because I'm very interested in memory and the obsolescence of emotions, but it might also just be because I have a thing for people with animals (or boats!) on their heads.

Organization and collection a day

2010-03-04T21:38:00.001-08:00

There is huge divide between how organized I would like to be and how organized I actually am. I'm actually very responsible and good with deadlines, and this sometimes leaves people with the mistaken impression that I have some sort of methodical, efficient system for how I work. Heh. Not true. I tend to make 3 times as much mess as a normal human being whenever I make anything. I clean up when I'm done, but the work in progress state is a little ridiculous. My drafting table is the size of a small country, and I manage to leave the whole thing looking like the victim of a very colorful apocalypse.
I'd like to be someone who keeps my brushes meticulously arranged according to size, and who keeps detailed notes of the ratios of paint I mix so that I can recreate specific colors. I would love to finish one thing before I start the next and neatly put things back where they belong. I am sure that organized artist exists somewhere deep down inside of me, but she seems to only appear in sporadic, slightly manic bursts of cleaning and rearranging that, for all their good intentions, invariably lapse quickly back into chaos.
In spite of my inability to maintain any lasting sense of organization, I often procrastinate by organizing things that don't really need to be organized. My favorite form of procrastination is arranging all my supplies according to color. I have a little shelf for all my paints, and when I'm not getting much done, I group them into color families to give myself a corporeal sense of accomplishment. There is nothing that I find more satisfying than getting a brand new set of paints or colored pencils where everything is shiny and clean and perfectly arranged in a color spectrum. I almost hesitate to use new supplies because I know they'll never be that pretty again! I stumbled across this blog and it really spoke to the organized, slightly OCD artist that lives somewhere deep, deep beneath my veneer of chaos. I love these little collections, they are like sushi for the eyes: each little piece is self contained, but the arrangement of the whole is so visually satisfying that these collections become so much more than the sum of their parts. I kind of want to wallpaper my studio in these!

Open studio coming up this Friday, solo show the following Friday

2010-03-03T09:10:00.001-08:00

I'm currently sitting at my kitchen table surrounded by massive piles of mat board and picture frames. Go go gadget framing party! Gasworks Gallery is having its quarterly open studio party this Friday, March 5th from 8-10pm. I'll be opening up my cozy little workspace and letting everyone take a peek at what I've been making. Come check out the open studio, our gallery is home to 20+ artists working in a variety of mediums, and there should be a lot of neat work to peruse and interesting people to meet. Gasworks Gallery is located at 3815 4th Avenue NE, right across the street from Ivar's, and my studio is in the lower lever all the way at the end of the very, very long hallway.
More info: www.gasworksgallery.com

I also have a solo show coming up next Friday, March 12th, at Urban Light Studios in Greenwood. I'm very, very excited about this show for a few different reasons. First, I will be covering 56 feet of wall space! As most of you know, I tend to work pretty small (it might be more accurate to say almost masochistically small): at first I was a little daunted by the prospect of filling such a large space, but I work well with deadlines and have been an extremely industrious panda and will be showing 15 completely new works from the last 3 months!
Secondly, Urban Light Studios is an awesome venue. The gallery is part of the Greenwood Collective, and the space includes (but is not limited to):

-a giant taxidermed lion!
-a room carpeted in astro turf!
-a room made from the log cabin set of the TV show Northern Exposure!

I strongly suggest you come check it out, the Greenwood Collective is also home to Bherd Studios, and they'll be hosting an opening as well. More info:
www.urbanlightstudios.com
www.greenwoodcollective.com

This one is giant. Relatively speaking.

2010-03-01T23:38:00.001-08:00

You know you've been working too small when something that's about 12"x16" seems enormous.

procrastination

2010-02-25T08:56:00.000-08:00

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

I was procrastinating and found this awesome video about procrastination.

still trying this inkless gouache thing...

2010-02-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

Current work in progress:

The prettiest dead hydrangeas on the block

2010-02-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

My household was doing some yardwork yesterday and instead of cutting off our dead hydrangeas, Bill had a truly brilliant idea.

Inkless gouache and a new favorite quote

2010-02-11T14:02:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to make my pieces a little more delicate, and yesterday I tried reigning myself in by forbidding myself the use of ink. This one is just pencil and gouache. Opinions? I know that some of my friends actually read this because you've talked to me about various pieces on here, so do lend your opinion. Should I embrace this new pencil-only technique?

Also, I've been reading a really lovely little book entitled "Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children about Their Art." Maurice Sendak is one of the contributing illustrators, and something he said really resonated with me:

"If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people-- I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I Remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images-- the emotional quality-- of particular moments in childhood. Happily an essential part of myself-- my dreaming life-- still lives in the light of childhood."

Couldn't agree more.

new show

2010-02-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

I have a new show going up in about three weeks, more details to come later, but for now here's the flier:

relearning acrylics

2010-02-03T17:34:00.001-08:00

So I've been painting things on wood lately, which means I am having to re-teach myself how to use acrylics. All these months of gouache gouache gouache have kinda made me forget, which is a little silly because I used to only paint with acrylics. Anyways, here are some things I'm working on.

My very nice boyfriend got me a scroll saw for my birthday a few months ago, so I'm working on cutting lots of intricate things out of wood and am imagining making almost diorama-like things with them. Here's a leaping wolf-city:

Favorite new artist!

2010-01-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

I just discovered the work of Lindsey Carr (AKA Little Robot) and it totally blew my mind. Amaazzziinnngggg! I'm in awe of her technical prowess, and I love the sense of quiet wonder that her paintings evoke. Her work makes you feel like a small child who has wandered into the woods and been willingly kidnaped by the world you always hoped existed somewhere.

Another work in progress

2010-01-21T16:23:00.001-08:00

I've started scanning things when I'm not quite done so that I can toy around with various colors on the computer before having to commit to paint. Figured so long as I had it scanned, I'd share the work in progress.