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Glacier-fed: painting and exploring at the Columbia Icefield!
Fenland Trail Public Art Project
Glacier-fed: painting and exploring at the Columbia Icefield!
In his book Icefields, Thomas Wharton describes a glacier as “the transition zone between two worlds.” It is a landscape constantly under transformation. Crevasses open and close; seracs form and fall; rock is carried slowly by the glacier to rest at its margins and terminus. Ultimately these rivers of ice carve beautiful cirques, majestic horns, and entire valleys.
Alberta boasts one of the most spectacular icefields on the planet, from which glaciers spill into major waterways flowing into three oceans. The Columbia Icefield covers an area roughly the size of Vancouver. Its most accessible glacier is Athabasca, whose terminus is a short walk from the Columbia Icefield Centre, located on the scenic Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper.
In September of 2002 I stayed for four days at the Icefield Centre while painting at the Columbia Icefield in preparation for a solo show at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff. The show, opening in February and continuing through April of 2003, is titled Glacier-fed, and celebrates such remarkable and ephemeral ice-scapes as the glaciers of the Columbia Icefield in honor of the United Nations International Year of Fresh Water, 2003.
Painting the dramatic glacial landscape is a real challenge for artists. Light defines glaciers more than anything else, as well as the subtle blue and green colorations of compressed ice (air bubbles are squeezed out under pressure — it’s the bubbles that reflect light and make snow white) and smaller rocks and silt carried on the glacier’s surface. Crevasses indicate the topography of the bedrock beneath the ice, and meltwater streams give direction to the glacier’s flow. This all makes sense, but one is staring at ice that glares back all day, and the sense of distance and of age is overwhelming….
One day, sitting on a lateral moraine beside the Athabasca Glacier, I was taken with a view of Mt. Andromeda. Clouds were rolling over Andromeda and its neighbours in a consistent pattern which lasted throughout my day of painting; it was as though the mountain were producing its own cloud. The wind was fierce, and I had two hats jammed onto my head and tied on tightly to keep them from blowing away; my painting supplies were held down firmly by large rocks. This wind, however, was warm for September in the Rockies, and I could hear glacial ice creaking and the occasional stone dislodged over the course of the day. A landscape in transition. An avalanche rumbled, and as I watched I recalled reading that the “fine powder” observed coursing down the mountain at a distance can contain chunks of ice the size of railway cars. All of this should have given me a sense of scale, but instead left me incredulous. (If it was that big, then how small was I?)
During my stay I was able to add much to my personal observations about glaciers via displays and interpretive panels in the Icefield Centre’s gallery, and by boarding a Snowcoach which took me and my fellow passengers safely and comfortably to a vantage point near the glacier’s headwall. Here we disembarked and stood on ice 1000 feet thick. Professional guides shared their knowledge of the geology and encouraged questions. Later in the day I hiked with a local guide and climber to an ice cave at the toe of Mt. Athabasca’s glacier, and the ice once again came eerily alive as it dripped and dislodged pebbles over our heads. As my companion pulled a rock out of the cave’s ceiling we wondered at the journey it had made to the terminus from the vast Icefield above.
My time at the Icefield Centre sadly over, I felt compelled to stay two more nights in Wilcox campground, in order to spend some time hiking and exploring a few of the area’s many glacier-fed waterways. As I made my way with a friend to Boundary Lake, and later to a vantage point above the Saskatchewan Glacier, I was astounded by the season’s colourful ground cover; bright red kinnick kinnick and orange/ ochre/ rust/ purple willows glowed in the golden September afternoon sun. We explored Panther and Bridal Veil Falls, starting at the popular roadside viewpoint and making our way down to the old Banff/Jasper highway, where a majestic waterfall cascades unseen by motorists from the new highway above. The last morning we took the short hike to investigate Stanley Falls, an often overlooked, though magnificent canyon north of the Icefield Centre. Then it was on to Jasper, and to new adventures.
I wrote to a friend on my return that it’s hard to imagine ever really coming "back" from a place like the Icefield. There’s a part of every person who spends time in such a remarkable landscape that is left behind, and a part of it that lies dormant beneath the traveler’s skin to be carried back to the earthly till plain of life and revived in quieter moments. The silence and the freedom creep slowly downhill….
Max Elliott, artist-in-residence
October 2002
Fenland Trail Public Art Project
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In the late winter and early spring of 2005, I was very honored to be invited by Parks Canada to work on the art work for new interpretive signposts for the Fenland Trail. With the collaborative input of interpreter and communications officer Ann Morrow, author Mary Harding, and environmental assessment officer Peter Duck, I worked on the eight sketches, depicting a variety of habitats along the trail through the four seasons. It always surprises me, after 25 years of living in or visiting the Bow Valley, just how much more there is to learn about the flora, fauna, and geology of Banff National Park. This became as much of a research project for me as it was an artistic challenge; to combine my two great loves in this project — nature and art — was immensely satisfying. The sketches are derived from a number of sources — on-site sketches, photographs, books on the ecology of the Rockies, and memory (the latter was particularly helpful in depicting the four seasons!) Many walks along the trail discussing the particular habits of its inhabitants with my colleagues, as well as many more solitary excursions to observe various times of day, lighting situations, changes in the weather and the subsequent exposure of groundcover, etc., contributed to my understanding of this vital montane environment. Besides sharpening my aesthetic appreciation of this special place, learning about the Fenland has educated me about the importance of preserving the diversity of life forms it supports. It is my hope that the new signposts and accompanying brochures will allow visiting and local hikers to share a similar experience. Max Elliott, 2005 |