Mountain-size Penguin Ice-Cream Maker
Hand pulled original Woodcut Print (oil-based ink on handmade cloud dragon rice paper)
Paper size: 8x10” / 20x25cm
Image size: 6x8.75” / 15x22cm
2022
Editions of 100 + 5AP
unframed
The Ice Queen (a polar bear ice sculpture) has a lot on her hands. With half the country's glaciers gone and its permafrost shifting, the Queen is desperately working with her magicians to close Pandora's box.
The walrus magicians are experimenting with a pilot plan to rebuild glaciers with a mountain-size ice-cream maker, in the form an Art Noveau penguin. Furthermore, the ice-cream maker absorbs atmospheric heat through its buttock tube and radiates cool air through its head!
Right now, this process generates a large amount of energy that churns out the creamiest ice-cream!
The walrus magicians need to figure out how to change ice-cream into glaciers…or do they?
*The ice-cream maker is in the shape of a penguin because…there is no Antarctica in my World of 2084! So I might as well put in my fav animal from the south pole! Otherwise, what if I don’t get to draw and carve penguin? ??
If you like this piece, you need to check out Mountain-size Penguin Ice-Cream Maker (close up.)
**Each print is original, hand-pulled and may look slightly different from the image sample.
About Northlandia Arctic Woodcuts
In Oct-Nov 2022, I went on a month-long research residency programme “The Arctic Circle” in the arctic Svalbard for Northlandia, one of the five imaginary countries in my lifelong World of 2084 project. During the trip, I sketched landscape on site on small woodblocks and weaved Northlandia narrative into the composition and carve the woodblocks on the boat and in my room in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town.
The collection of 24 Northlandia Arctic Woodcuts was then be hand-printed in Hong Kong and launched in December 2022. These small woodcut prints serve as a starting point for larger works (woodcuts and drawings and more) under the Northlandia arctic narrative I will develop over the next decade.
About Northlandia
Northlandia is one of the five imaginary countries in The World of 2084, my lifelong project to portray a futuristic world in the corresponding year.
Drawing from diverse sources such as early arctic pioneer history, Inuit and Central American mythology, science fiction and children's literature, literary tradition magical realism and fairy tales, Northlandia is a surreal arctic tale of the precarious balance between human greed and the magical landscape, between the north and the rest of the world and between self-preservation and the rapidly changing climate.