“I was taken by the paper qualities of ice.  Flying over an ice shelf by helicopter it looks just like a ripped piece of paper” enthuses book artist Rachel Hazell describing the amazing experience of spending almost a month as artist-in-residence on an expedition ship in Antarctica. 

Her conversation is peppered with visual snapshots of her journey as she remembers ten Adélie penguins wobbling over to say hello from a group of literally thousands, or being woken at 4.30am in the morning when the ship was breaking through the ice and watching as within minutes 35 orca whales were dipping in and out of the pools they’d made.

The trip came about when a fellow artist mentioned a travel company, Quark Expeditions , to her.  They operate polar expedition cruises on powerful, polar icebreakers, and on each voyage there is an artist-in-residence, as well as experts on marine biology, birds and polar exploration.  Rachel explains “It is a specialist expedition and not just a tourist ship.  On our journey we discovered a new Emperor penguin colony.”

Her role was to be available all the time to passengers to help them describe what they were moving through and on rough days she ran bookbinding workshops.  The only cost she had to pay was her flight to join the ship and insurance. 

The ship travelled 5,000 miles from South America to the Antarctic Circle and carried 105 passengers of all nationalities.   Virtually every day there were landings by helicopter or little rubber speedboats, so there was no time for Rachel to work, however, she took hundreds of photographs. 

She was amongst the 30 passengers who had never travelled south of the Antarctic Circle before so she set up a ‘Virgin Society’ and when they crossed the circle at 7.30am they were served hot chocolate and rum to celebrate.

Although it was very cold, she explained that you didn’t notice it as the ship was warm, and there was 24 hour daylight.

One of the most moving moments for Rachel was visiting the historic huts of Shackleton and Scott.  “There were piles of the paper used to write the polar news on, 100 year old paper, and sides of ham hung up, all perfectly preserved.  In Scott’s hut it was very poignant seeing their mugs hung up and they didn’t come back.”

Rachel designs, writes, illustrates, prints, binds and exhibits book-related work and in the recent years she has started making large paper installations. Since her Antarctic visit she has had the time to explore her work through a creative development award from the Scottish Arts Council, and has been making tissue paper icebergs and developing ways to create ice shelves using traditional book binding techniques. 

She will be showing a mixture of paper sculptures, framed bookworks, and unique limited edition pieces in her exhibition ‘Ice Bound: Antarctic Bookworks’ taking place at Casa Luna in Amsterdam from 26 March to 17 April 2005. The gallery is in a 17th century canal house and she was invited to hold an exhibition there when she was selected to represent Scotland in the Paper Holland Bienalle last year. 

Rachel is hoping to go on an expedition to the North Pole this July and her dream is to be able to visit Antarctica again in 2007/2008 during International Polar Year.

Find out more about Rachel at www.hazelldesignsbooks.co.uk

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