Chillin’ in Antarctica, with art on the rocks

Artist Lita Albuquerque and her team document the progress of “Stellar Axis: Antarctica,” her land art installation and accompanying performance on the Ross Ice Shelf, with a blog and diaries at www.stellaraxis.comThe work, which placed 99 blue spheres on the ice near McMurdo Station, the U.S. government-run research facility, to mirror the sky, is the first temporary earthwork installation created on the continent under the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program -- and perhaps the first ever in Antarctica. The performance, which took place Dec. 22, the solstice, used 51 volunteers from McMurdo.

Albuquerque envisions the work as the first of two phases, to be completed at the Arctic Circle by “symbolizing a shaft of starlight aligned with the rotational axis of Earth.”