The Countess Olivia

lyrics from Two Birds by Typhoon

ARTISTS AND WRITERS WANTED for HAZARDOUS JOURNEY on JOINT CREATIVE VENTURE

Never Mind the Blizzard is an upcoming zine dedicated to the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, and we now invite all artists and writers interested in this colourful period of polar history to submit work to us!

So, grab your sledging pencil or polar paint kit—we’re looking for:

Anything under the umbrella of visual arts, including paintings, illustrations, comics, collage, diagrams, printmaking, and more.

Creative writing: short pieces of fiction, vignettes, creative nonfiction, poetry, etc.

Any combination of these.

In other words: if it (1) relates to an Antarctic expedition taking place between 1897 and 1922 and (2) can be put to (digital) paper, send it our way! Playfulness and formal experimentation is encouraged, and everyone is invited to contribute regardless of skill level. Please see the submission guidelines on our website for a few more details.

A record player used to introduce penguins to music. Ice bound in the South polar seas. 1925. Illustration by Olive Lofts.

please excuse any rigging and colour inaccuracies, i went off a moodboard of various sources for erebus's shapes and colours, as well as a layperson's eye for what i can only describe as many big ropes. there were so many ropes. i don't understand all the ropes.

sailors woolworks (or woolies) were embroidered tapestries that those at sea wove to pass the time and capture the likeness of their vessels. here's a good article if you're keen to read more about them. but the tl:dr; is that they showed ships broadside, full sail. in embroidery terms, the lack of dimensional detail makes them a surprisingly good project for a beginner!!

The ramparts of Mount Erebus. Ross Island near Antarctica during the Terra Nova expedition, 1911.