Bartalos

It was a year ago this month that my fellow ’08-’09 Antarctic Artist and Writer grantees and I first met. We spent only a day in Denver but our group of eight connected well.

We’ve since kept in touch and followed each others’ projects via email, tweets, project blogs, online social networks, and even meetings in person, since three of us live here in San Francisco.

Cheryl E. Leonard accompanied by Cliff Neighbors and Felix Macnee (out of frame) at the Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco.

I recently got to see Cheryl E. Leonard perform some of her Antarctic works-in-progress at the Luggage Store Gallery. Cheryl is a local composer, improviser and instrument builder who spent January at Palmer Station recording sound and images and collecting natural materials to create her musical compositions with. Her sounds are as unique as the material she uses, which include stones, limpet shells and penguin bones.

Cheryl E. Leonard and Cliff Neighbors.

The concert featured Cheryl as a winner of the Sounding Out California award, a state-wide competition presented by NEXMAP, an organization supporting contemporary, experimental art. Congratulations on the honor Cheryl!

Over on the East Coast, grantee Scott Sternbach just concluded his first exhibition of Antarctic photographs at the City University of New York in Long Island City where he directs LaGuardia Community College’s photography department. The show, titled Antarctic Souls, featured his large-scale format black and white portraits and color images taken at Palmer Station and on the United States Antarctic Program’s L.M. Gould Research Vessel.

Photographed by Scott Sternbach on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Nice work, Scott! I love this photo by the way; it so reminds me of that memorable part of Encounters at the End of the World where the debatably crazy penguin wanders off in the wrong direction to its certain demise. I can practically hear Werner Herzog narrating that segment when looking at this picture. And that’s a compliment.