One Rock
Jacinda Russell
One Rock, Archival pigment print, 34” × 24”, 2023–2024
Granite from the Precambrian Era, splintered shale, and fractured gneiss dominated the Svalbardian landscape. The melting permafrost forced them above ground where they gathered in distinctive gray piles among the yellow moss. We were allowed to take one rock and there were countless interpretations of what that meant.
One per day?
One per beach?
One per landing?
One for everyone we know who might want one back home?
While on the Arctic Circle Residency, I searched for rocks that resembled icebergs to 3D scan and mold into ice. Upon my return, I wondered what others brought back with them and why. After asking a handful of my shipmates to mail me “one” they could part with for a few weeks, I photographed them in a lighting studio, monumentalized against a white background.
Hannah’s diptych embodies fragility, violent erosion … a mandoline splice. Candace found ochre to grind into pigment and gave me permission to draw with it, but a year later, it was so hard, it nearly tore the paper. The gneissic banding on Hester’s trapezoid resembles aerial views of roads paved onto volcanic ash. Paula truly took only one, presenting it to me on the last day of the voyage. This unforgettable specimen rests on my windowsill, as out of place as a glacial erratic. Like the melting ice, we picked up the stones and deposited them far from their origin. Erratics tell the story of a glacier’s path, and each one of these rocks reveals something about ours.
Untitled
Jacinda Russell
Untitled from the series Metaphorical Antipodes: Svalbard 80º N, Freezer, Ice, Butterfly Pea Flower Powder, 6” × 7” × 3”, 2022 - 2023.
I am drawn to the transitory nature of ice, how it is preserved naturally and when humans intervene. In Metaphorical Antipodes: Svalbard 80º N, I shift my attention to permafrost, witnessing how its premature loss modifies geography and impacts cultural heritage. I created 3D prints from rocks collected by my shipmates on the Arctic Circle Residency in October 2022. In their enlarged and monochromatic state, they resemble icebergs which I then form into silicone molds, and cast the plastic filament into ice. They are displayed in a glass-front mini freezer reflecting upon the impermanence of the ice-covered landscape, the inability and great environmental cost to save what we are losing, and the transient nature of the artwork itself.
The author declares they have no competing interests
Sundry Articles Found
Laurie Glover
1
Where certain hardwoods’
right angle branches
tend slightly downward by degrees
the bark wrinkles along
the underside of the turn
as human skin does where a joint bends
the grain compressed within
becomes a bracket strong
enough to hold the weight of itself all the way to leaf end
Looking up into such trees
shipwrights would see
the undersides of knees
A natural L, the leg curved slightly in
the perfect shape for attaching
deck beams to hull frame
One old oak might provide
one of these knee joints
the rest of the trunk some number of planks
Nansen’s Fram alone required
four hundred such pieces of trees
bolted together in pairs
Fox, Hecla, Fury, Griper, Alert,
Isbjorn, Tegethoff, Jeannette.
The British Navy.
The Dutch East India fleet.
Our ship is made of steel
runs on diesel
when not under sail.
2
The Chukchi people say the world
was formed from Raven’s droppings
falling from him as he flew.
Liquids the oceans.
The land the solid stuff.
The Jeannette foundered
north of the Anzhu islands
off the Siberian coast
A number of articles from her
appeared later
in the neighborhood of Julianehab
now Qarqortaq
Ice had carried her westward
nearly twenty degrees
bearing indubitable marks
Two cutters carried
the survivors to the Lena delta
where those who died
were wrapped in canvas
Large quantities of driftwood
carried by the polar current
come every year to Greenland
Norwegian fir
two kinds of alder
Siberian larch
placed in coffins improvised
from drift-timber
a stone cairn above them raised
A throwing-stick such as those
used for hurling bird-darts in Alaska
was found at Godthab
now Nuuk
ornamented by its maker
with glass beads bartered from Asia
A New York Herald reporter
in his zeal for a story
opened the tomb
to search for journals or other papers.
This was called desecration.
The mortuary people call
the brass box full of ashes ‘her’
3
The damp lower portion of the wild north wind
has given birth to white ice crystals
on the sides of boulders
A staunch revenue steamer
made of Oregon fir fastened
with copper, iron, and locust-tree nails
Mr. Nelson, a naturalist
and Smithsonian zealot
The Corwin in search of lost ships
whalers Mt. Wollaston and Vigilant
US Arctic Expedition Jeannette
another of the village cemeteries
on a very rough slope of weathered granite
bodies simply laid upon the surface
in pursuit of a bird
he finds better game
whole skeletons or single bones
wedged into chance positions
mixed in with whatever effects
had been laid beside them
ivory spears, arrows
dishes of various kinds
ghastlier spoils
This is called collection.
Three local men, seal hunting,
boarded a big ship they found
caught in the pack, masts chopped down,
the hold so full of water they couldn’t go in,
didn’t disturb four men, dead a long time,
found in the cabin
to keep them from rolling down
a row of big stones had also been laid
next to some along the lower side
From the galley they bore away all
that could conveniently be carried:
colander, knives, ladle, stew pan,
a meat-saw, a hand-lamp, an adze
a square tin lantern painted green
a bottle of some sort of medicine
Four of these objects ship’s officer
Herring purchased by barter
The imbricate ice resembles owl feathers
indicating by their curves
the varying direction
pursued by the interrupted wind
4
A walrus colony inhabits the far end of a flat strand
where kilns once rendered whales into oil
Artifacts from humans also dead removed, displayed in cases
harpoon (whale), barrel handle (oil) knife (to cut), pulley (to hoist up)
head of a bolt (to hold together a hut)
fragment of a door hinge (to keep the wind out)
nearly unraveled striped wool hats
knitted stockings one still gartered at the knee
blue jacket of coarse-woven wool double inner lining spilling
twenty close-placed button holes sewed by left-behind wives
Photographers array themselves in a line
using various small rectangles comprised of plastic and rare metals
to capture the beasts in zeros and ones
or in one case on cellulose treated with chemicals
5
Before the change, earth and sky were different.
Earth made of perishable stuff.
Sky serene and unchanging.
After the change, sky became like earth
Shaped by processes dynamic and violent.
One shop on the main street sells
sealskins, piled flat or shaped
into boots and moccasins.
Andrea says she can’t even enter
but I want to visit the narwhal horn
wired to the wall,
thin as shell, calcium colored.
Lushly soft, those furs
grey, speckled, ovoid
slitted on each side
where the seal’s flippers were.
Cosmic rays that fill
the vast volume of space,
that barrage of fragmented atoms, must
be the result of violence on a grand scale.
Also for sale: hunting knives
hafted with reindeer horn
Out in the fjords
hunters’ huts preserved
as historical sites
are shredded by polar bears
lacking ice on which to hunt seals.
Along the adjacent street
paper snowflakes are taped up
inside windows of red-and-white houses
like Santa’s, from whose eaves, above
children’s bicycles, shot birds hang.
The morphological thinker focuses
on one phenomenon at a time,
makes a list of all possible
explanations and all devices
by which to gather information.
Only after the list is complete
is a single explanation chosen.
The problem is the completion of the list
and with which phenomena to start.
6
Arctic Pro Muck Boots
six pairs of wool socks
thermals, double-fleece pullover
hooded wool sweater, neck gaiter
Also four white cotton hankies
one with lower case ‘carol’ in white thread
Red ThermoBall jacket
front pocket for pencil and notebook
gloves with half-mittens that flip
exposing fingers to write with
Notebook folded backwards
hankie damp, then gone.
Thinking I must have dropped it
I retrace my steps
look for familiar objects
that will tell me where I’ve been
A photographer shouts,
“You’re in my frame!”
pair of bird wings intact
small puddle frozen in granite palm
The first Zodiac arrives
to take us back to the ship
Shards of white quartz
raise false hopes
Someone drops a boulder
onto the stream ice
to hear the boom perhaps
or to watch the extent of the break
She was ready to leave. I don’t want
to say goodbye to the small scrap of what’s left
7
The point of origin is an area
of sea-to-air transfer
To avoid burning up
the earth must constantly lose
energy to space
near-surface currents (warm)
move north
cool
cooler waters (dense)
sink
prevailing westerly winds
carry water vapor away
Something is always being lost
Concentrate
Increases in density
cold
salt
sinking into the abyss
slide south
loop
Rise
8
At Havhestbreen at dawn
the sun showed itself under
a briefly lifted lid of banded cloud
those looking shoreward saw
the glacier awash with red
For the rest of the day
above dark mountains seamed
white along erosion lines
the waning half-moon floats
sideways across the sky, never sets
calving big as building collapse
When the tide turns
the slurry of ice at the glacier’s base
begins to move toward us,
murmurs, mutters, encloses
pieces come from behind, push past,
slide over, gyre
Parts of the whole will always detach
belying the illusion that the body is one.
We are so much less intact
than we would have the world believe,
riven, crevassed.
9
In all the summaries
of polar expeditions
there is a want of clearness
Entire crews of two vessels
found frozen stark by Russians
Dogs in the same
bizarre and lifelike positions
as the men
by terrible whirlwinds constrained
from gaining entrance
by thicknesses of mists
unable to keep each other in sight
the land lay not
as the Globe made mention
the shallop could not come to land
the water was so shoale
Mounted on the flats
by the shore were crosses
and other signs
primitively made
of stones
no similitude of habitation
In a closed system
burning sea-coal
would be lethal
10
The Tlingit say that Raven
entered the body of Woman
and was birthed by her into the tent
of the old man who hoarded the Sun
When we are farthest north
we’re in what geologists call
the Pre-Devonian basement
grasses, ferns and horsetail
created stable ground
Isfjord, where we departed
is much younger, the attic
the giant trees had fallen
humans hadn’t yet come into being
pantodonts could walk
from Greenland
or even Baffin Island
by the time humans were
the ice had come
We live on the roof
break into the house
They needed light
oil from the bodies of their kin
Still burn
compressed plant remains
We make the least of us
descend into excavated caverns
They see
imprints of leaves in ceilings
of room-and-pillar mines
now decommissioned
The settlement razed
in the tunnels unfilled
evidence of earlier lives lie
footprints of large land mammals
walking together
shops, cinema, bowling alley,
as if they’d all never been
During their time off
the mitigators built
driftwood sculptures
also burned
released
not re-bound
11
We do not ask whether
the rock is to be thought of
as a real object
One could say we saw only
the surface of things
a great sage in the wilderness
hears the sad song of a woman
who lives inside
The inflatable nosing
the story says her husband
made her up
he never touched her
afloat then aground
she showed the sage
how to follow her in
toeing out calf deep
until contact
to move past the rough surface
broken stone underfoot
ice boulders separate and stranded
deep spaces
worlds
unlike themselves
one minute to the next
fold
as the sun intermittent
exposes interior facets
worlds
felt
Svalbard, Norway, October 2022
and
Sonoma, California, USA
February 2023
The author declares they have no competing interests
Fragments appear from the following sources
Arms, Myron. Riddle of the Ice. Doubleday: New York, 1998.
Dyson, Freeman. “The Power of Morphological Thinking.” The New York Review of Books, May 10, 2018.
Haven, Samuel I. editor, Voyage to Spitzbergen in the Year 1613. Introduction and Journal of Sir Hugh Willoughby. Wilson & Sons: Boston, 1860.
Muir, John. The Cruise of the Corwin. Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1993.
Nansen, Fridtjof. Farthest North. G Newness: London, 1898.
Piepjohn, Karsten et al, The Geology of Longyearbyen. Longyearbyen feltbiologiske forening (LoFF): Longyearbyen, 2022.
Reid, Bill and Robert Bringhurst, The Raven Steals the Light. University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1984.
Rytkheu, Yuri. The Chukchi Bible. Translated by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse. Archipelago Books: New York, 2000.
Shulman, David. “Buddhist Baedeckers,” in The New York Review of Books, March 22, 2020.
Let’s Make a Deal
Joan Albaugh
Let’s Make a Deal, Oil on canvas, 40” × 40”, 2023
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Joan Albaugh
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Oil on canvas, 30” × 30”, 2023.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Whale Bone
Harley Cowan
Whale Bone, Silver gelatin print, 2022.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.