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I wear any brand I wear glasses like
wear nostril filters or not breathing I
mean not when there’s a camera on me
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I’m an artist I draw large-scale
landscape drawings the document Earth’s
changing climate I’m so moved personally
by these places there are those moments
when you’re looking out at beautiful
landscapes and you just oh I don’t know
for me that’s one of the most intense
emotional experiences I think I ever
feel and in my life I’m trying to
recreate that so that when viewers stand
in front of the work they can feel
enveloped by that landscape I always
wanted my work to be a part of a bigger
picture to be more important than just a
pretty picture for somebody’s wall
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the lead navigator for NASA’s airborne
terrestrial exploration is the one that
invited me to come fly with operation
IceBridge I’m really really excited to
get to see this country from a whole new
perspective I’ve been there a couple of
times but I’ve never gotten to see the
glaciers from above so I’m very excited
to get to see the texture of the ice my
nipple next body of work will be aerial
views the ice at both poles we’re trying
to look at the top of the ice inside the
internal structure of the ice and also
all the way onto the bedrock to fill in
knowledge about the Earth’s cryosphere
the Earth’s ice cover that would have
otherwise have been lost between the
demise of the ice stay at one spacecraft
in 2009 and the launch of the ice at two
spacecraft in 2018 so it’s called ice
bridge because we’re bridging the gap
between those two spacecraft
I think it’s fair to say the most
important people on the aircraft is the
pilots we generally carry three pilots
and also a couple of flight engineers
and those men and women work together to
keep us all safe now in addition to that
of course we the flight crew we have the
maintenance crew we also have the
science proof science crew of course are
mainly responsible for operating the
science instruments that gather this
data that goes out to inform the world
about the state of the polar ice sheets
and those instruments are laser
altimeter which measure the changing
volume of the ice sheet whole suite of
radars that look all the way from the
top of the ice sheet through its
internal structure and all the way into
the bedrock we also have several cameras
on board that work at a variety of
wavelengths including infrared that tell
us a lot about the temperature structure
of the eyes and we also have a number of
visual cameras and those are important
things that tell us not only how the ice
sheets are changing now but how they
will change in the future they’re
collecting extremely valuable data of
our changing climate which we need not
only figure out how Earth’s climate was
in the past but also it’ll help us learn
more about the ice itself and how it
melts so that we can prepare for what’s
to come our number one goal every single
day we go out there and fly is to make
sure we gather the truest most accurate
data that we can gather about the planet
about the cryosphere with no agenda at
all
and that’s a key point no agenda at all
we are not politicians here if we’re
about facts about measuring facts and
putting it out there for the world to
interpret
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it’s a really valuable collaboration to
figure out how science and art can
intersect and how one can inform the
other overall for this particular season
is there anything that you found
severely interesting or startling so we
designed the lower grid on this mission
the inner part 22 here back at 1997 when
we first started noticing how the
glacier was beginning to draw down so
pleasure was brought back we’re not
talking a couple hundred feet we its
prospect miles and miles just for the
last 20 years
Jakub have been glacier is one of the
largest in Greenland and it dispenses 6%
of Greenland’s ice sheet that’s a lot of
icebergs the one that sums the Titanic
likely came from Jakob Savin glacier
I’ve been working with operation
IceBridge since it started in 2009 when
we first started measuring ice back in
the early 1990s nobody knew what
Greenland was doing was it getting
bigger or getting smaller that was a
total unknown because at the time we
didn’t have the means the human race
didn’t have the means to measure that to
understand that in 2000 we published our
first results and what that showed us
was that the thickening in the middle
even back in the 90s did not offset
thinning on the outside in other words
the ice sheet was not in balance it was
delivering ice into the oceans and
raising sea level and that process has
accelerated since the 1990s there’s
really only one place for that that ice
to go it has to go into the oceans and
raise sea level and that’s fundamentally
the societal interest in those
rising sea levels will affect everybody
and that could be due to population
displacement that could be due to
weather pattern changes that can be due
to shipping constraints that might arise
because of climate change and sea level
rise all these things affect everybody
not as people who live on the coast but
because so much of the human race does
live near the coast
it’s going to affect them the most and
soonest not only did I want to focus on
the climate crisis and my drawings but
it was also how can you not when you’re
making work about a place you have to
address what is the most important thing
that’s happening there and that’s the
climate changing
this whole trip I just I keep thinking
of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings her
compositions were very simple she would
find a detail and it looks abstract so
you’re not necessarily sure what you’re
actually looking at I’m really finding
myself interested in that kind of
imagery with the ice I think that’s
gonna change the style of my drawings
drastically I mean the perspective is
totally thrown off when you’re looking
at the ice from above it could be
kingdoms with just jagged pointy shards
of ice popping up out of the glacier to
raw muscle without skin on it alligator
skin elephant skin I just want to play a
part in helping to communicate not only
the importance of what these scientists
are doing but also translate the
scientific data into a more accessible
medium one that’s more digestible maybe
and one that is a little bit more
emotional I hope that I am rendering the
feelings that I have when I’m witnessing
the ice at first hand because I want
viewers to be able to have as much of
the same experience that I had as I can
give them
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