Art Professor Selected to Paint Glaciers at North Pole

March 05, 2025

By Christi Mays / Photos by Becky Moseman and Stephanie Chambers

A mere 10 degrees latitude from the North Pole, aboard a tall ship sailing vessel, Art Department Chair Stephanie Chambers left behind the familiar comfort of civilization this past October on a transformative voyage to one of the most untouched corners of the world in the Arctic Circle.

Her mission while on the expedition was to document and convey what she saw and felt through her medium of choice, paint. The trip turned out to be so much more than merely capturing scenes of snowy mountaintops and icy tundra, however. The trip was about capturing the feeling and essence of being present in such a remote and sublime area of the world, and it left her with a humbling sense of awe.

"It's a place so far removed from our everyday life, especially living here in Texas," she said. "Being above the Arctic Circle is so dreamlike and such a surreal experience. We have no way to understand what that is or to be able to comprehend that type of environment. My project was to go and document it and bring back the experience and be able to share it in multiple venues, like in a gallery or giving talks鈥攖o bring awareness that this does exist and share it so it's not as far removed from everyday life so we can learn to protect it."

AWE-INSPIRING

The experience was part of a 21-day trip that took Chambers to 80 degrees north latitude, where she was one of 30 international artists and scientists selected through the Arctic Circle Program to participate in a two-week residency aboard the tall ship Antiqua sailing around the high Arctic to study and record the melting glaciers and their environmental impact. Chambers, who typically specializes in painting forests and greenery, created more than 60 oil and gouache pieces. Despite the unique challenges of painting in extremely cold conditions鈥攁nd potential polar bear encounters鈥攖he deep sense of wonder and responsibility she felt in witnessing such a pristine and raw wilderness left her with a profound gratitude and awareness she will never forget.

Her project was based on the idea of field research鈥� painting on-site and documenting the place, time and experience. "It's hard to put into words, and that's why painters are painters: You can't really talk about 'it' or what 'it' is. Translating it through paint helps to convey that meaning."

On the first stop, the artist set up her easel and paints to capture an area where the serene mountains reflected off a calm pool of water. She set her bag down, compiled her paints next to her easel and went to work.

"I was so enamored and just so in awe that I was getting to paint that all of a sudden, I looked down, and I'm standing in about six inches of water," she said, explaining that the tide had come in unnoticed while she was working. "I had to pack up really quickly. It was funny because the water wasn't close when I first went out there."

Leaving behind the familiar comfort of civilization and entering the seemingly limitless expanse of the Arctic Ocean was a profound experience for Chambers, one she still finds hard to convey in words. From her floating studio, free from all distractions of daily life, Chambers experienced the vastness of the sea, a pristine landscape devoid of human interference, and breathtaking colors and shapes.

Describing her paintings as "plein-air painting," which is French for "out-of-doors" or "painting on-site," Chambers and the other artists and scientists got to leave the boat to explore twice each day. While she was painting, the scientists dug through snow and moss to look at microorganisms, videographers recorded the melodic creaking and groaning of the icebergs, and photographers captured the untamed beauty through their lenses.

"I think the impacts of such an experience are so far beyond what I can comprehend at the moment that I don't even know what it will be until it starts to settle, and I can process a little bit more.鈥�

UNFORGIVING WILDERNESS

In the high-Arctic, weather can change in the blink of an eye. Since her trip took place just as summer began transitioning to winter, the expedition could sail to the islands without having to break through the thick ice that forms in the winter. Because the area isn't fully mapped, crew members often had to watch from the bow for icebergs and submerged islands. Daily temperatures hovered between 10 and zero degrees Fahrenheit. When the group launched on Oct. 3, they had close to nine hours of daylight each day to explore, but by the time they returned two weeks later, daylight had transitioned to about three hours each day.

OVERWHELMING PRESENCE OF GOD

Being in a place where possibly no human had ever walked made Chambers feel both magnificent and special to live on this earth, but also very small at the same time. "It's incomprehensible how it made me feel. I've never felt anything like it and will never feel that way again," she said. "The presence of God is so overwhelmingly strong to be in such a place. The idea of faith is that there's no proof, right? That's why you have faith. But that was proof鈥攖here's no way that was created by anything other than God. I feel like if someone was ever questioning their faith and they experienced what I experienced, they would never question their faith for the rest of their lives."

无码流出 Stephanie Chambers on tall ship Antiqua

DAY-TO-DAY

The crew constantly monitored the weather and maps for the semi-charted area to find ideal places to drop anchor. Because glaciers and ice caps have their own mini-weather cycles, the situation could change instantly.

"We might be going up a fjord where the weather should be good, but then you come up to a certain glacier, and it's super windy or snowing. "The group aimed to make two landings each day of the voyage and had to hop on smaller boats called zodiacs that the crew would launch to shuttle them ashore.

While the scientists and artists were prepped during the morning briefings and donned their heavy gear and life jackets, guides boarded the Zodiacs to scout the exploration zone for polar bears and set up a perimeter to help keep the voyagers safe. They stood guard, always watching and scanning the horizon for the deadly creatures.

"The polar bears were the most significant threat, but other than that, we had free reign to climb and explore as much as we wanted. They gave us a lot of freedom in choosing what we wanted to experience and how we wanted to experience it."

Though the group did spot a polar bear from the boat, they fortunately only saw fresh paw prints while hiking. When one of the guides discovered a sleeping bear on the other side of a hill, she quickly turned the voyagers around and headed back to the landing site. Chambers said they did get fairly close to some walruses on Moffen Island, but the guides kept an eye on them, and they never got aggressive.

PAINTING WITH A PURPOSE

Just as a photographer captures a vision through a lens, Chamber says she translates her physical presence in a place through the movement of her marks, the choice of colors, and the way she mixes the colors and puts them on the canvas.

"It all comes from the shape, the energy, the literal kind of energy from my arm moving the paint across the canvas or paper," she explained. 鈥淧aintings are influenced more than just visually but also by noise, by temperature, by sound, by smell. The things you are surrounding yourself with all influence how marks are made, how colors are chosen and how they're manipulated and put together on the canvas."

When Chambers sets out to paint, her goal isn't to duplicate what her eye is seeing.

"It's incorporating all of these other energies and experiences to influence the painting and being open to letting the painting develop and respond to the time and the moment."

She said expeditions like this one are important to help preserve the pristine environment of the glaciers at the North Pole.

"The ice there is melting three times faster than anywhere else in the world. The effect of that is major, yet it's so far removed from us that there's no immediate effect. So, people don't have the pull to want to protect it."

The trip was meaningful for her to document and return information to the public to raise awareness and connect with them.

"Even though most people may never get to go there, art helps connect them to it and builds a kind of empathy and a sense to protect it."

COLD-WEATHER READY

Because Chambers lived in Northern Illinois while she worked on her Master of Fine Arts degree, she was familiar with the clothing and layers needed to fend off the cold. But what truly prepared her for the North Pole was the three years she鈥檚 been trekking to glaciers in Alaska to paint in temperatures dipping to 20 degrees below freezing. One of her discoveries was placing hand warmers underneath her palette, which kept her oils from hardening so quickly. She also began putting a towel on the ground to insulate her feet from the frozen earth.

"It's taken me years of trial and error to figure out how to paint in the snow!鈥�

VOYAGE TO THE NORTH POLE

Being chosen as one of 30 scientists and artists from around the world was an adventure in itself. The detailed application process included a 15-page proposal, a project description and a letter of support from her dean. Three months later, Chambers learned she was selected to join the Arctic Circle expeditionary residency program. Just to reach the remote launching point, she had to take five connecting planes from Austin to Atlanta to Frankford to Oslo and then to her final destination鈥攁 tiny airstrip in the small village of Longyearbyen, on the archipelago of Svalbard.

When the ship returned, the group stayed in the village for a few nights to reacclimate to civilization. "When they put this residency together, they realized the magnitude of what we would experience and that you need a little bit of time to get back to reality.鈥�

TAKING IT TO THE CLASSROOM

Chamber said her experience in the Arctic has definitely impacted her teaching style. In her classroom, she emphasizes the value of field-based research, where students engage in on-site experiences to inform their conceptual and artistic development. She says encouraging students to conduct interviews for art projects and collect data from various sources like museums or local sites can greatly inspire and enhance their artistic messages.

"It's not just finding inspiration on the internet and going to the library. Those things will feed into what you're doing, but there are other options open to you as well. It's about getting them to see what type of message they want to say through the art and then finding different ways to collect information to inspire their choices to create the artwork."

MINDBLOWING EXPERIENCE

Chambers says that now that she's back from the expedition, she's trying to figure out her responsibility to share what she learned with the world.

"It's still so surreal. I have this now and need to share it somehow, but I'm figuring it out; it will be years of projects, paintings and talks. It was incredible that I got to go to one of the most remote places in the world, and they let me make art from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. The opportunity to see something like that and then paint it is still mind-blowing."