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Helen Glazer: Walking in Antarctica

CAE1910

Summary Note

Walking in Antarctica was created by Helen Glazer from her two-month experience in the Antarctic as a 2015 grantee of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Materials include National Science Foundation Applications, digital imagery, audio files, exhibition ephemera, and press materials.

Biographical Note

Helen Glazer makes photographs and photo-based sculpture based on complex natural forms, informed by an understanding of scientific concepts of growth and form in nature and the physical processes that shape the landscape. She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in art and earned an M.F.A. from the Mount Royal School of the Maryland Institute, College of Art. She is a past recipient of awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, including an Individual Artist’s Award in Photography in 2012. She has published articles about art-making and artists, in magazines and journals such as Artes, Artpapers and Feminist Studies, as well as over 30 catalog essays about artists for the Rosenberg Gallery, Goucher College, where she was exhibitions director from 1986 to 1998. She created a self-guided tour of the Smithsonian Institution museums on the theme of mythology as a Fellow in Museum Practice in 1994-95.

In 2015 Glazer traveled to Antarctica as a grantee of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, in order to photograph ice and geological formations for eventual production as photographic prints and sculpture. She has had work from the Antarctica project featured on the web sites of Vice Media’s Creators Project, Atlas Obscura, and the Cloud Appreciation Society. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including group exhibitions at the Delaware Museum of Art (2012-13) and New York Hall of Science (2011-12, 2017-18) and in a solo exhibition at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York (2012). Two of her sculptures were displayed at the American Ambassador’s Residence in Lima, Peru, as part of the State Department’s Art-in-Embassies Program (2010-13). She was 2014-15 artist-in-residence for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, where she collaborated with scientist and made photographs and sculpture inspired by their research on urban ecology. Goucher College in Baltimore presented a major solo show of her Antarctica project in the Rosenberg Gallery (2017-18), funded in part by a 2015 Rubys Artist Project Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance and a grant from the Puffin Foundation.

Scope and Content

Walking in Antarctica was created by Helen Glazer from her two-month experience in the Antarctic as a 2015 grantee of the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Her project consists of photographic prints, 3D printed sculptures, and an accompanying narrative. More specifically, the series combines photographs with sculptures generated from photographs of ice and rock formations via 3D scanning technology, fabricated on 3D printers and CNC routers (computer-controlled cutting machines), then hand-painted. The work also incorporates an audio tour available through a mobile phone. Glazer has organized her material as a series of “walks” through over frozen lakes, around glaciers and sea ice formations, into an ice cave, across fields of boulders, and through a colony of nesting Adélie penguins. The images range from landscapes to close-ups of small-scale features. The centerpieces of the work are four miniatures—which are, to Glazer’s knowledge, the first sculptures to ever be made out of three-dimensional scans of the Antarctic landscape. Two depict sections of the Canada Glacier, and one is a pressure ridge near the Double Curtain Glacier on McMurdo Sound. The last is a ventifact, one of many such wind-eroded boulders that dot the landscape. Materials include National Science Foundation Applications, digital imagery, audio files, exhibition ephemera, and press materials.

Arrangement

This archive is organized into three series. Series 1 contains materials related to the application and acceptance process for applying the National Science Foundation’s Artist in Residence Program, including final reports prepared by the artist. Series 2 contains materials created by Glazer while in Antarctica. Series 3 contains materials related to Glazer’s artistic outcomes from the trip.
  • Series 1: National Science Foundation Applications and Deployment
  • Series 2: Working in the Field
  • Series 3: Project Outcomes

Inclusive Dates

2006-2019

Bulk Dates

2014-2016

Quantity / Extent

.25 cubic feet

Language

English

Related Archive Collections

  • CAE1042: Lita Albuquerque: Stellar Axis, Antarctica
  • CAE1103: Joan Myers: Wondrous Cold, An Antarctic Journey
  • CAE1107: Stephen Eastaugh: Antarctic Work
  • CAE1112: Simon Balm: Stellar Axis, Antarctica
  • CAE1116: Chris Drury: Antarctica
  • CAE1117: William L. Fox: Terra Antarctica
  • CAE1202: David Rosenthal: Paintings of the North and South Polar Regions
  • CAE1217: Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid: Ice Music
  • CAE1218: Jean de Pomereu: Antarctic Photographs
  • CAE1219: Stuart Klipper: The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole
  • CAE1307: Chris Kannen: An Antarctic Extended Season
  • CAE1605: Anna McKee: 68,000 Years of Ice
  • CAE1806: Bruce Licher: Stamping Antarctica

Related Publications

Andrews, Lynne. Antarctic Eye: The Visual Journey. Mornington, Tasmania: Studio One, 2007.

Fogg, G.E., and David Smith. The Explorations of Antarctica: The Last Unspoilt Continent. London: Cassell Publishers Limited, 1990.

Fox, William L. Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2005.

Marsching, Jane D., and Andrea Polli. Far Field Digital Culture, Climate Change, and the Poles. Bristol, U.K.: Intellect, 2012.

Container Listing by Series:

CAE1910/1 Series 1: National Science Foundation Applications and Deployment, 2006-2016

Series 1 contains National Science Foundation applications and supporting materials in folders 1-5. Folder 6 contains logistics forms required for deployment, folder 7 contains final reports for the National Science Foundation six months after her return.

  • ARCH-FILE 79-1

    • 1-1 2006 NSF Application, Unfunded, 2006-2007
    • 1-2 2007 NSF Application, Unfunded, 2007
    • 1-3 2008 NSF Application, Unfunded, 2005-2009
    • 1-4 2013 NSF Application, Unfunded, 2013-2014
    • 1-5 2014 NSF Application, Funded, 2014-2015
    • 1-6 NSF Deployment Information, 2015
    • 1-7 NSF Final Reports, 2016

CAE1910/2 Series 2: Working in the Field, 2015-2017

Series 2 contains materials related to Glazer’s time in Antarctica. Materials include her blog in folder 1 and digital images in folder 2.

  • ARCH-FILE 79-1

    • 2-1 Antarctic Blog, Video, and Correspondence, 2015-2017
    • 2-2 Photographs from the Field, 2015-2016

Additional Materials

  • Archive F25 Oversized Items

    • 2-2#58b Canada Glacier from Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, Work Print, 2015 (Printed 2019)
    • 2-2#62 Canada Glacier from Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, Photograph, 2015

  • Archive S-Box 34

    • 2-2#42 Lake Ice, Lake Hoare, Dry Valleys, Antarctica, Photograph, 2015
    • 2-2#46 Blood Falls, Antarctica, Photograph, 2015

CAE1910/3 Series 3: Outcomes, 2016-2019

Series 3 contains audio files, sculptural output information, exhibition ephemera, and press materials related to Glazer’s artistic outcomes from the trip.

  • ARCH-FILE 79-1

    • 3-1 Consequent Sculptures, 2016-2018
    • 3-2 Walking in Antarctica Exhibition Materials, 2017-2019
    • 3-3 Sondheim Prize Semi-finalists Exhibition, Artscape (July 15 – 31, 2016), 2016
    • 3-4 Baltimore-Washington International Airport Exhibition (July 2017 – Ongoing), 2016-2018
    • 3-5 The Trawick Prize Exhibition, Gallery B, Bethesda Maryland (Sept. 6 – 30, 2017), 2017
    • 3-6 Goucher College Rosenberg Gallery Exhibition (Oct. 18 – Dec. 18, 2017), 2017
    • 3-7 Towers Crescent (Apr. 22 – Aug. 10, 2019), 2019
    • 3-8 Maryland Art Place (Sept. 19 – Nov. 10, 2019), 2019
    • 3-9 Exhibits USA (2022 – 2027), 2019
    • 3-10 General Press and Media Coverage, 2016-2019

Additional Materials

  • ARCH-OBJ 57

    • 3-1#7 Canada Glacier from Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, 3D Printed Sculpture Model, 2017

  • Archive S-Box 32

    • 3-10#5 Antarctic and Arctic Data Consortium Calendar, 2017

  • Archive S-Box 34

    • 3-1#6 Canada Glacier from Lake Fryxell, Antarctica sculpture, Photograph, 2018
    • 3-6#21 Walking in Antarctica (20), Rosenberg Gallery Photograph, 2017
    • 3-6#22 Walking in Antarctica (21), Rosenberg Gallery, Photograph, 201
    • 3-6#32 Helen Glazer: Walking in Antarctica, Poster, 2017