Antarctic Wonder: OTBN and ART in the Bar

Open That Bottle Night - Palmer Station

Celebrated the last Saturday in February. This is a community event we've been celebrating here for 7 Februarys' now. It's a fun event started out by Dottie Gaiter and John Brecher of the Wall Street Journal for many years. It's an event to mark that calendar, open a bottle of wine you've been saving for a special occasion and celebrate with friends or just your closest loved one. It's about sharing a special evening. Think about this next year and share with others. To give you more details I'll post the link...

http://palatepress.com/2011/03/wine/otbn-reporting-from-palmer-station-antarcitca/#respond

We had three tables with all hand made appetizers including sushi.

This is table one with a painting of Arthur Harbor done in the 1990s by David Rosenthal.

Here is table two getting loaded with more shrimp cocktail.

Here is our last long table of sushi, duck slices, beef marinated in brandy and the list goes on...

Finally our Wine table that had numerous bottles of reds, whites, desert wines and champagnes. It was pure delight as they were all different wines from as far away as France.

Art in the Bar

...the show

Another community event...that took place the 11th of March. All season long people have been working on art works of one kind or another. Some works took longer than others with some springing out from the ocean at the last minute...as you'll see. The art wasn't limited to 2 or 3 dimensional, there was also the sounds of the musicians on station and a picture slide show shown in our lounge where everyone was invited to post photos of whatever they wanted. It was a full around fun event. We weren't able to finish all the wines at OTBN, so the rest were opened here along with some special treats sent from the states to folks around station who brought them out for this event.

Here is a delightful way of displaying Art in da Bar made out of delicate home made crackers.

This and the next work were done by Caycee one of the field techs here on station, working with gliders and phytoplankton. Amazingly talented...science she may be good at, but I see her as an artist above and beyond.

Now we have a special entry from Bill Baker a diver here who is studying chemical biology. This was a special contest for people to enter creative use of geometric symbols turning it into art. This was his entry

Here are two different artists' entries.

The top one is a watercolor on YUPO and was done by Kate who is here studying Krill, this piece happened to made on the day of the Japan earthquake and we dubbed it "Tsunami".

The one below it was done by Ruth who had found these barnacles on the shores of Chile on her way to Palmer. She put them on display as her art which was a nice 3 dimensional piece of art.

Now we're into a textile art.

Rebecca makes rugs and she creates her own designs. This design is of the tidal chart of Palmer. The boarder is of pancake ice. It's magnificent. The dimensions are 2' X 3'. It took more than one season to complete this work.

Not all art is done here at Palmer. This was a gift to one of our staff from a friend who is a talented sculptured. It rests on a rock found here at Palmer.