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BATTERY PARK CITY ART TEACHER'S TWO MONTHS IN ANTARCTICA
 

Elise Engler with some of her paintings of Antarctica, based on the two months that she spent there in 2009-2010 under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

 

Few people ever get to see Antarctica. There are military and scientific stations there, but tourism is strictly limited so as not to damage the fragile environment of the coldest place on Earth. Fewer people still get to live on Antarctica for any length of time. But Elise Engler, who has been teaching art for the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy for around 20 years, is one of them.  

 

Between mid-December 2009 and mid-February 2010, Engler lived in Antarctica under a grant from the National Science Foundation's Artists and Writers program. Its purpose "is to give the public access to science in another way," said Engler. "It allows people to actually see what's happening in the Antarctic."

  

When Engler went, the National Science Foundation accepted four or five people a year for the program. Now, it accepts only two people a year. The grants cover transportation and all expenses associated with the trip, but do not include a stipend to cover living expenses back home.  

    

"I felt that if I could go to Antarctica, I could do anything," Engler said. She spent a year working on her application - doing research and crafting a proposal.

 

When she finally got word that she had been accepted, she found, however, that she would have to discard her plan because she was being sent to the McMurdo Station instead of to the much smaller Palmer Station. Her idea had been to draw everything in the Palmer Station, which houses 44 to 48 people. McMurdo was too big for that. In the austral summer, the population swells to around 1,200 people and it bustles like a small town.    

 

Engler was 53 at the time she made this trip and was in good physical shape. But when she got to McMurdo, she had to go through survival training, "learning how to use a portable stove, how to use different kinds of communication systems in case the one you have breaks." She dug a trench in the snow and slept in it and built an igloo to sleep in in case of a helicopter crash. She learned how to pitch a tent in the wind.   

 

McMurdo is on a small island off the coast of Antarctica. There are several research stations on that island, including Cape Royds, where Engler stayed for five days. It has a small penguin colony and Shackleton's hut. She was also at Cape Crozier, which has around 750,000 penguins. She stayed there for two nights. Twice, she flew to the South Pole, around a four-hour flight from McMurdo. And for three weeks, she lived on Antarctica's mainland in a region called the "Dry Valleys" because it is part of the 1 percent of Antarctica that is not covered with snow.

 

"In the Dry Valleys, the colors of the mountains change every day," she said. "It was extraordinary, really. It was kind of hard to paint them because the colors kept changing."  

   

She also described the unusual experience of living in 24 hours of daylight. "The quality of the light is so crystalline clear," she said. "Everything just glistens." 

 

As she reflected on the experience, she said that, "Every day there was something new to look forward to. It was wonderful not to have expectations but to be open to new landscapes, new people and to science I often didn't understand."

 

She found herself surrounded by interesting people. "When you're sitting in the big lunchroom at McMurdo, the person next to you might be a scientist and the person across from you is a mountain guide who's been up Everest five times - and then there are a lot of military people," she said. "So it's a mix of very extraordinary people." 

 

She described herself as "a fly on the wall," recording in her drawings and paintings everything she saw. She calls the work that she produced "Unpacking Antarctica."  

 

"It's a play on the words, 'ice pack,'" she said. "If you unpack it, you let people see the contents of it. My work is about contents."   

 

An exhibit of Engler's Antarctica paintings.

She took gouache, watercolor, colored pencils and different kinds of paper with her, but very little in the way of clothing. In Christchurch, New Zealand, the U.S. government maintains a clothing repository "with an incredible library of coats and pants and everything you need," she said. "You don't need anything of your own."  

 

A few of Engler's paintings of Antarctica are on display at the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy headquarters at 75 Battery Place, 4th floor, through March 28. A larger number are at the Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City in an exhibit called "Thaw." They will be there through April 6.  

 

Engler has previously had shows of her Antarctica work in Albany at the College of St. Rose and at the National Science Foundation headquarters in Arlington, Va., outside of Washington, D.C. She will be talking about her experience at the Explorers' Club in the fall.  

 

- Terese Loeb Kreuzer   

 

Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45th Ave., Long Island City. Open: Thurs.-Mon., 11 a.m. -6 p.m. (closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays); phone: (718) 937-6317. For more information, click here.  

 

Engler has made accordion books of some of her Antarctica drawings. They are for sale at the Dorsky Gallery. (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

 

Bits & Bytes  

CITI BIKE ON THE SKIDS; PORT AUTHORITY QUESTIONS WTC SECURITY;
NO VOTE ON 3WTC; DOWNTOWN AS PLAYGROUND FOR THE MEGA-RICH

After a cold, snowy winter, Citi Bike is losing money. (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

 

"Citi Bike, Needing Millions of Dollars, Looks for Help," The Wall Street Journal, 3/20/14. "Leaders of Citi Bike are moving quickly to raise tens of millions of dollars to rescue the popular bike-share program as it loses money," says The Wall Street Journal. "Citi Bike's bright blue bicycles have become a seemingly indispensable part of some city neighborhoods, but its managers don't believe it can survive if it doesn't become more appealing to tourists and expand to new neighborhoods," according to The Journal. "The program's leaders have approached officials in Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration about raising Citi Bike's rates." The bike-share program has had no difficulty selling annual passes for $95, but these are far less profitable than daily or monthly passes, which have not been popular. In addition, "Citi Bike has been forced to contend with a number of costly issues, including damage to equipment during superstorm Sandy, software glitches and a difficult 2013-14 winter that discouraged ridership," The Journal says. "But advocates said Alta Bicycle Share, the company that operates Citi Bike through a subsidiary, also hadn't done enough to improve the system and adapt to problems as they arose." For the complete article, click here.

"Port Agency Investigates Boy's Ascent of World Trade Center," New York Times 3/20/14. "Authorities are trying to determine how a 16-year-old New Jersey boy sneaked past security at 1 World Trade Center and spent two hours early Sunday making his way to the top of the 1,776-foot tower, which is still under construction," says The New York Times. "The boy, identified as Justin Casquejo of Weehawken, entered the construction site surrounding the tower through a 12-by-12-inch hole in the exterior fence, said Joe Pentangelo, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the building. The teenager crawled through the hole around 4 a.m. and was caught about two hours later." According to The Times, Casquejo found a way up through the scaffolding, climbed onto the sixth floor, and took the elevator up to the 88th floor. Then he climbed a staircase to the 104th floor. For the complete article, click here.

"Port Authority tables key vote on fate of 3 WTC," Crain's New York Business, 3/19/14. "The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on Wednesday postponed a vote on a deal that would substantially increase its financial backing of 3 World Trade Center, the $2 billion-plus office tower planned at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan," says Crain's New York Business. "The Port Authority's board of commissioners, which met for its monthly meeting Wednesday afternoon, granted vice chairman Scott Rechler and Port Authority staff permission to continue negotiating a deal with the tower's developer, Silverstein Properties. A new vote is expected in April or May." Crain's says that Rechler, one of the Port Authority's top New York officials and a major Manhattan landlord, "has championed a plan to hike the Port Authority's financial guarantee on the tower to about $1.1 billion from $200 million currently. That means that if Silverstein Properties defaults on its loans for the proposed 2.5 million square foot, 80-story office tower, the Port Authority would have five times as much money at risk in the deal. That possibility has created divisions among the Port Authority's commissioners, who must approve the deal by a majority vote." For the complete article, click here.

"We Are the 1%: Lower Manhattan's Luxury Condos and Upscale Retail May Only Widen the Gap," Commercial Observer, 3/20/14. Commercial Observer describes Downtown Manhattan as a playground for the super-rich, with "gleaming new skyscrapers. Swarms of young pedestrians. Cutting edge tech and creative office tenants. High-end retail. Sprouting condo towers. A new transportation hub."  It cites "more than a dozen residential development projects, at least a handful of which are high-end, luxury buildings, which will make Downtown Manhattan a destination for the city and world's most well-to-do, broadening a wealth gap that the city's top dog wants so badly to mend." Among other new residential buildings, Commercial Observer mentions   the Sterling Mason, a 32-unit luxury condo building that Taconic Investment Partners just topped off in Tribeca. "Pricing at the building starts at $3.9 million for a two-bedroom and shoots to $23 million for its two penthouses (one of which is under contract for $21 million), with a roster that will likely include a mix of foreign investors and domestic families," says the Commercial Observer. However, anyone wanting to live almost anywhere in lower Manhattan will have to be very rich, say the prognosticators. For the complete article, click here. 

"Chic Online Shop La Garçonne Is Opening a Flagship Boutique in Northwest Tribeca," Tribeca Citizen, 3/18/14. "After ten years of being online, fashion retailer La Garçonne is opening a flagship boutique at 465 Greenwich (between Watts and Desbrosses, in the old Trisha Brown Dance Company offices)," says Tribeca Citizen. The store will carry both women's and men's collections, plus home furnishings and books. They hope to open May 1. For the complete article, click here.

Help sought for East Harlem building collapse victims:  The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is accepting contributions to help the individuals, families and businesses affected by the building collapse that occurred at 116th Street and Park Avenue on Wednesday, March 12. To contribute or for additional information about the Mayor's Fund, click here or call 311.