Sneak peeks from How Goes the Battle?

Hey everyone,
I am neck deep in studio mode right now as I have a show opening at Joe Bar on April 11th. Put it on 'yer calendar, I'll update with invitation links and what not when I have 'em.

The show is called How Goes the Battle?, and it's about anger, surrender, and the failure of language. I readily admit that it's a cathartic personal therapy project: I've been sorting through the wreckage of a devastating breakup. Each piece is paired with a poem by Kay Ryan. Rather than describe more, here are some detail shots from a few of the pieces and the text of their accompanying poems:

Wooden

In the presence of supple

goodness, some people

grow less flexible,

experiencing a woodenness

they wouldn’t have thought possible.

It is as strange and paradoxical

as the combined suffering

of Pinocchio and Geppetto

if Pinocchio had turned and said,

I can’t be human after all.

Shift

Words have loyalties

to so much

we don't control.

Each word we write

rights itself

according to poles

we cant see; think of

magnetic compulsion

or an equal stringency.

Its hard for us

to imagine how small

a part we play in

holding up the tall

spires we believe

our minds erect.

Then north shifts,

buildings shear,

and we suspect.

Losses

Most losses add some­thing —

a new socket or silence,

a gap in a per­sonal

arch­i­pel­ago of islands.

We have that dif­fer­ence

to visit—itself

a going-on of sorts.

But there are other losses

so far beyond report

that they leave holes

in holes only

like the ends of the

long and lonely lives

of cast­aways

thoughts dead but not.

Travelogue, snow mobiling, radio show

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

Penguins, gingerbread transport vehicles, travelogues and moooorrrreeee

 

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

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.