Hester Blum

We are proud to present a very special journal issue--a glorious, monumental issue--on Arctic environment, art, and culture, which is the artistic fruit of a sailing expedition to Svalbard that reached 80˚ N latitude: “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard,” edited by Hester Blum, Candace Jensen, and Jacinda Russell, Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture 2:1-2 (2026): /issue/1298/info/. The twenty-three contributors to this special issue of Regeneration are artists, writers, and researchers who sailed around the high Arctic archipelago Svalbard on a tall ship with the expeditionary residency program The Arctic Circle. The multimedia, interdisciplinary, creative meditations featured in “On the Cold Edge”—nearly 100 individual works—are drawn from and respond to our experience of Arctic flora and fauna; anthropogenic climate change; the history of resource extraction; the sound of calving glaciers; the Northern Lights; the rhythms of a masted sailing ship; and Svalbard’s geological outlandishness. We are honored that our expeditionary work appears in Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, which won the 2025 Best New Journal Award from the Counsel of Editors of Learned Journals. We thank Regeneration editors Stephanie Foote, Dana Luciano, and Anthony Lioi for publishing this monumental project. (link in bio; reposted to correct photo sizing) “On the Cold Edge” Editors: Hester Blum, Candace Jensen, and Jacinda Russell Contributors: Joan Albaugh @joanalbaugh Leonor Anthony @leonoranthonyartist Ashlin Aronin @scenictanker Hester Blum @hesterblum Sergei Chernikov @s.chernikov.1 Dianne Chisholm @diannechisholm Harley Cowan @harleycowan Jessica Creane @ikantkoan Laurie Glover #laurieglover Brian House @h0use Candace Jensen @artist.cjensen Hannah Larrabee @hannah.larrabee Andrea Legge @andrealeggeart Felicia LeRoy @felicia.lr Jia-Jen Lin @jiajenlin Alexandra Lockhart @aelock12 Zoriça Markovich @zorica_kelly_markovich Terhi Nieminen @slugnieminen Alma Noor @sarahgerats Osceola Refetoff @ospix Jacinda Russell @jacindarussellart Paula Sćiuk @inmyfabulousness Drea Zlanabitnig @dreazlanabitnig

Yesterday we communed with Charles the Great Horned Owl of Forest Park, thanks to the superb guidance of @forestparkowls owl whisperer Mark Glenshaw--STL friends, cannot recommend an owl prowl enough.

In the antepenultimate section we are highlighting of the double special issue of Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard,” the subject is ice. Subjectice: /article/id/20337/ Smeerenburgbreen, Ashlin Aronin [image 1] The Polar Silk Road, Zoriça Markovich [image 4] Dying in Dreams, Hannah Larrabee [image 3] A Road, or So it Seemed, Joan Albaugh [image 2] Dahlbreen Glacier, Hannah Larrabee Ice Memory, Zoriça Markovich In Subjectice, Ashlin Aronin’s sound piece Smeerenburgbreen, Zoriça Markovich’s The Polar Silk Road and Ice Memory, and Hannah Larrabee’s poems “Dying in Dreams” and “Dahlbreen Glacier” feature the artists’ navigation of their more personal encounters with the cryosphere. The pieces in this section are tactile and immersive and sonically startling; feel your way, take a listen. Edited by Hester Blum, Candace Jensen, and Jacinda Russell; link to full issue in bio. @scenictanker @joanalbaugh @hannah.larrabee @zorica_kelly_markovich @artist.cjensen @jacindarussellart

Bard is beautiful photo dump

@a.thebomb_theburne as Emcee in @bardbmtc Cabaret

My beautiful lacerating @a.thebomb_theburne as the Emcee singing “I Don’t Care Much”

There are few topics of more urgent interest within the Environmental Humanities than infrastructure. The ninth section of our special issue of Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard” provides new frames for thinking about Arctic infrastructure: Frames & Infrastructure: /article/id/20335/ Salt. Water. Obstruction., Jacinda Russell [image 1] Cars on Unnamed Road, Adventfjorden, Osceola Refetoff [image 4] No Easy Way Into Another World; A Defeat Is Better Than Nothing At All, Terhi Nieminen [image 2] Helke, Hornbækpollen 79◦ 36.2’ N 012◦ 38.7’ E, Paula Sćiuk [image 5] Running and Standing Rigging, S/V Antigua, Harley Cowan [image 3] The material tools, hardware, and structures that mediated our transit through the Arctic were far from tidy or frictionless. In Frames & Infrastructure Russell’s Salt. Water. Obstruction provides an unexpected portal into photography’s polar limitations, while Terhi Nieminen’s contributions No Easy Way Into Another World and A Defeat Is Better Than Nothing At All, as well as Refetoff’s Cars on Unnamed Road, suggest a wry acceptance of Svalbard’s transportation challenges.  Edited by Hester Blum, Candace Jensen, and Jacinda Russell; link to full issue in bio. @jacindarussellart @artist.cjensen @slugnieminen @ospix @inmyfabulousness @harleycowan

Arctic Intimacy: who can tell it? The contributors to the eighth section of our special issue of Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard” have some thoughts: Intimacy: /article/id/20313/ Arctic: Intimacy, Hannah Larrabee [image 3] @hannah.larrabee Reclining Nude #Erikbreen; Reclining Nude #274, Alma Noor [image 2] @sarahgerats Collapsing Landscape: No One Surface the Same as Any Other, Jia-Jen Lin [image 4] @jiajenlin Arctic: Lover, Hannah Larrabee Zombie Ice: Ancient Ice Sample #01; Zombie Ice: Ancient Ice Sample #02, Zoriça Markovich [image 5] @zorica_kelly_markovich Isbjørn, Stubendorffbreen, Dianne Chisholm Svalbard Series: Movement Vignettes: Øy; Ice of Breen; Felt Essence of:, Alexandra Lockhart [image 1] @aelock12 A drive to connection spurs the work of Intimacy, notably in the marvelous formal sweep of Sarah Gerats’s diptych Reclining Nude #Erikbreen and in Jia-Jen Lin’s triptychs from Collapsing Landscape. An attention to the forms and expressions of intimacy in Hannah Larrabee’s and Dianne Chisholm’s poems in this section are in evocative communion with Alexandra Lockhart’s haunting Felt Essence performance. Edited by Hester Blum, Candace Jensen @artist.cjensen , and Jacinda Russell @jacindarussellart ; link to full issue in bio.

Runes! Northern Lights! Improbably striped rocks! Moby-Dick mentioned! Candace Jensen @artist.cjensen , Jacinda Russell @jacindarussellart , and I are hyping the seventh section of our special issue Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard”: READING THE LANDSCAPE: Mirari, Chermsideøya 80◦ 28.2’ N 019◦ 54.8’ E, Paula Sćiuk @inmyfabulousness [image 5] “The World Is Here Too”: Out of Place in Svalbard”, Hester Blum [image 1] Anchorage at Gipsvika; Havhestbreen Glacier; Andrée’s Launch Site, Virgohamna, Harley Cowan @harleycowan [image 4] Resting Place, Joan Albaugh @joanalbaugh [image 3] Vox Populi Vox Dei, Candace Jensen Asemic Land Alphabet, Candace Jensen [image 2] Moonrise, Esmarkbreen, Harley Cowan Reading the Landscape finds Hester Blum (in her essay “The World Is Here Too”) feeling out of place in the Arctic, even as the art of Albaugh, Cowan, and Sćiuk featured in this section offers up various visual languages for conning the landscape. In Candace Jensen’s lyric essay “Vox Populi Vox Dei,” the runic rocks of Svalbard animate an intertextual meditation on communication and relationship.

Co-editors Candace Jensen, Jacinda Russell @jacindarussellart , and I have a treat for our sixth section highlighted from our special issue Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard”: WALRI: /article/id/20312/ Walruses at Smeerenburg, Hannah Larrabee [image 3 excerpt] @hannah.larrabee Walruses of Smeerenburg, Harley Cowan [image 2] @harleycowan 80˚ North, Hannah Larrabee Walrus Voyeur, Candace Jensen @artist.cjensen [image 1] This was an exceptional day. The historical significance and ecological drama of the landing day at Smeerenburg—its northern prospect uninterrupted to the Pole—especially compelled us: see here the pod of walruses (or Walri, we insist) lounging on the pebbled shore, ringed by glaciated mountains. Link to full issue in bio

Today at @centralprintstudios ’s Saturday workshop Fakes and Forgeries: Funny Money I made a certificate for the joint stock company I want to see in the world. #jammingjeopardy #isolatoes “So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it. […] I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale and the ship—where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he was exposed to.“

Co-editors Candace Jensen @artist.cjensen , Jacinda Russell @jacindarussellart , and I continue to highlight our special issue Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, “On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard.” Our fifth section: OBJECTICE: /article/id/20310/ Brash Ice, Spitsbergen (I & II); Ablation, Felicia LeRoy @felicia.lr Aglarond, Esmarkbreen 78◦ 17.9’ N 013◦ 56.1’ E; Etele, Forelandsundet 78◦ 33.1’ N 011◦ 16.7’ E; Ichorous, Sóre Castrénoya 80◦ 32.7’ N 019◦ 59.4’ E; Lún, Monacobreen 79◦ 30.0’ N 012◦ 33.0’ E; Sérac, Selvågen 78◦ 33.1’ N 011◦ 16.7’ E; Thú, Bjónesskága 78◦ 34.3’ N 012◦ 24.4’ E; Vesicle, Nordkappbukta 80◦ 30.9’ N 019◦ 54.9’ E, Paula Sćiuk @inmyfabulousness [image 3] Bergy Seltzer, Felicia LeRoy [image 2] A Thousand Words for Ice, Dahlbrebukta; Moon Under Virgo Bay, Danskøya, Osceola Refetoff @ospix [image 1] Dahlbreen Glacier, Dianne Chisholm @diannechisholm Esmarkbreen Glacier; Esmarkbreen Glacier, Harley Cowan @harleycowan [image 4] Ice dominated the landscape at each zodiac landing, and we examined it from both an objective and subjective viewpoint. In Objectice, Paula Sćiuk’s photographs address the formation, disappearance, and luminosity of ice. Felicia LeRoy’s Brash Ice Spitsbergen (I & II) and Ablation, captures the substance’s breakage and striations in glass sculptures as well as (in Bergy Seltzer) its rapid melting. Osceola Refetoff’s A Thousand Words for Ice – Multispectral Exposure – Dahlbrebukta reveals ice’s infrared spectrum, a kaleidoscope of color enhanced by filters in the photographic process. Link to full issue in bio