All images © Ryan Newburn, shared with permission
“When you look into the walls of an ice cave, you are looking into the past as if you were suddenly inside of a time capsule that had been buried for 500 to 1,000 years,” says Ryan Newburn. “Every air bubble that you see is oxygen from a different time period. Every speckle of ash is from a different volcanic eruption.”
Raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and now based in Reykjavik, Newburn is closely acquainted with the ice caves that surround his adopted home. He first came to Iceland in 2018, training on the enormous Vatnajokull Glacier before working as an expedition guide and eventually launching his own tour company, Ice Pic Journeys, with his fellow American business partner Mike Reid.
Today, Newburn ventures into the frozen caverns with groups, photographing them and the landscape along the way. His images capture the immensity of the arctic masses, their smooth, ribbed surfaces, and the shapely contours of caverns and rivers carving through the ice. Explorers are often seen in the distance, at the end of a rippling, rocky tunnel or precariously posed beneath a cluster of sharp icicles to showcase the scale of the openings.
Occupying such an ancient and always evolving space is an experience that’s difficult to photograph, Newburn shares, because the constant trickle of melting water, the roar of distant rivers, or even the unique interplay of light and glacier are impossible to depict entirely. “Underneath the ice, where the sun cannot penetrate,” he says, “your eyes slowly adjust from the bright sun to the glowing deep blue crystal walls of the ice cave. The more that your eyes adjust, the more saturated the blue gets. It’s a surreal visual experience that you cannot get from any photo of an ice cave.”
While shades of blue dominate most of his images, much of the walls are transparent and crystalline, making it appear as if you could “gaze into it for miles.” This clarity, he explains, is because glacial ice has low oxidation, about 10 to 15 percent only, due to the extreme pressure exerted during their formation that forced much of the oxygen from the snow as it compacted.
Although exploring these spaces is dangerous—Newburn emphasizes the necessity of proper gear and a guide who knows the ins and outs of performing crevasse rescues—it’s also an experience that truly only happens once. He elaborates:
What’s even more unreal is realizing that when you discover an ice cave for the very first time, you are the only human that has ever been inside. On a planet where almost every area of land has been explored, the glacier provides you with never-ending caves and structures to discover. This is because the ice is always melting away and forming something new that didn’t exist yesterday and won’t exist next year. This creates an unending sense of wanderlust of what I am going to stumble upon next when exploring.
Newburn shares many of his glacial adventures on Instagram, and you can find more about his company’s expeditions on its site.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Through Gripping Photos, Ryan Newburn Captures the Depths of Iceland’s Ancient Glacial Caves appeared first on Colossal.
Between her artwork, children’s books, and forays into fashion, Whitney L. Anderson can’t be strictly defined — not in her work, not in her person.
From vibrant cow and horse collages to spirit-infused pop culture paintings to her strikingly illustrated lesson-imbued children’s books, this self-taught artist’s work blends reverent realism with playful fantasy, intelligence with soul. Credit, in part, her upbringing for her curiosity and wisdom beyond her 36 years.
Whitney L. Anderson with her piece, Chief.
Born into a fourth-generation commercial fishing family in Alaska, Anderson grew up working on a boat with her dad every summer. She is part Alaskan Native of the Aleut tribe; her Finnish great-great-grandfather settled in the Aleutian Islands and married a Native woman. As a child, Anderson learned the Aleuts’ ways, ate salmon every day, and loved the Indigenous Haida art she was exposed to. Starting at the tender age of 3, she discovered drawing, a quiet activity done in her own little corner oasis as a reprieve from the hard work on the boat. “That’s kind of my nonglamorous beginning of my art journey,” she says with her easy laugh.
The family eventually moved from Alaska to Seattle and then to Colorado. Every year, her mom took Whitney and her sisters out of school for a month to travel. Between the age of 9 and 15, she visited more than 40 countries. Her mother’s “the world is a classroom,” philosophy molded her, and she now attributes her multidisciplinary interests, subject matter, and mediums to her diverse experiences from that time.
But back then, Whitney was an accomplished athlete and had not yet viewed art as the focal point of her life. “It was little more than a good contrast to the high-octane life I lived as an athlete through college.” For years, her life revolved around ski racing and a full-ride cross-country scholarship to Duke University. Everything changed when she sustained a serious injury and was forced to come face-to-face with her called. “I didn’t choose art,” she explains. “Art chose me.”
Dolly Parton by Whitney L. Anderson
A fine arts degree and a world of hard knocks later, she settled in on her artwork — and her own way of doing it. “Everything I do is self-taught from my own mind and experience,” Anderson says.
She’s hard-pressed to pick a favorite medium. “It’s like asking which is your favorite child. All of them are special in unique dimensional thinking. I have a fascination in several different, unrelated things.” You’re likely to find her drawing, illustrating, painting, writing, and working on her collages.
Anyone else might end up in traction after sitting on the floor, cross-legged, leaning over thousands of tiny pieces of paper, cutting, sorting, assembling, gluing, hour after hour, day after day. But it’s the norm for Anderson as she painstakingly assembles her collages in her high-ceiling basement studio in Denver, where she makes her home while keeping her connection to Alaska every summer when she heads north to visit family.
People call it mosaic art — she prefers the term pixelated fine art. And, she adds, it’s “pure collage — not multimedia — there is no painting involved in my collages.” Her tools include glue sticks, scissors, magazines, a big piece of paper, and a podcast or music in the background while she works because the process can be “kind of monotonous.” The results, though, are anything but. It might be a black-and-white portraits of a young Dolly Parton, Cindy Crawford, or Cassius Clay; a commission depicting a treasured racehorse or family pets; or a representation of a breaching whale. “It starts with an emotion or a thought — I think I’ll do a cow today — and it just kind of takes me to a cozy place. I feel like I step outside of my current realm and go to another place. I get the idea, photography it on my phone, lightly sketch it on the background paper. Then I cut magazine pages into tiny pieces and sort colors and textures into piles. I call it controlled chaos. My brain is like high-speed Internet: It scans the photograph and picks up everything I need: colors, textures, shades, etc. and assembles the chaos. Mod Podge to seal.”
Lunatic Fringe by Whitney L. Anderson
The finished collages can range from 24 x 36 inches to as large as 100 x 100, but most are typically 36 x 48. “Generally,” Anderson says, “I thrive off creating larger works of art — I can incorporate details easier that way.”
She has favorite subjects. “I’ve loved horses since I was a kid,” she says. “It’s my favorite land animal. Something about their spirits touches mine. I really admire horse people and that way of life. One of my first collages was of a horse. I’ve done dozens since then and have donated some of my horse artwork to various horse charities.”
One of the highlights of her career as a Western artist was donating to a friend’s charity. “Legacy of the West takes place at National Finals Rodeo. I created some very iconic livestock for that event: two famous bucking bulls in the rodeo world named Pearl Harbor and Bodacious and a famous bucking horse named Lunatic Fringe. I was also commissioned by Purina to do an 8-foot-by-8-foot horse portrait collage made out of Purina bags.”
As for her cow artworks, “The cow represents the all-American animal — commercialized, but the heart of America,” Anderson says. “They provide and symbolize so much. Americans are so removed from this animal that is so integral to their lives, and I wanted to elevate it to a fine art piece. It’s really soothing for me to do a cow. In my dreams, maybe I’m a farm girl at heart. I feed those dreams through my art. It’s very satisfying when I’m able to create that subject matter — I feel kind of like I’m living that life in a way.”
It’s a welcome refuge from a world full of distractions. “I find my solace in art,” Anderson says. “What has compelled me to do all this is a melding of perfectionism with the old adage that adversities, challenges, and disappointments in life compel creatives to create even more. From time immemorial, some of the greatest works of art have been born out of pain, out of the valley. I’ve had a lot of heartbreak and disappointments in my life that, compounded with my perfectionism, have compelled me to create my art. ‘The ripples you make today will be the waves you ride tomorrow’ is something I wrote almost 10 years ago, and it’s an idea that keeps me going.”
Orca by Whitney L. Anderson
Visit Whitney L. Anderson on her site at whitneylanderson.com and on Instagram.
Header Image: Bodacious by Whitney L. Anderson
This article appeared in our May/June 2023 issue, available on newsstands now or through our C&I Shop.
In many households around the globe the rice cooker holds perpetual court within the kitchen, always ready to prepare a couple cups of rice for a meal (or keeping leftovers warm from the night prior). But even our own small sized unit designed for a modest 2 to 3 cups capacity requires a considerable amount of counter space. The appliance’s appearance while contemporary, is also a tad gaudy, embellished with attention seeking illuminated controls and shiny metal detailing – par for the course within the category. Even the brand most often associated with modern minimalism in the domestic context features more buttons than most people will ever need or use. The Bowld Mini Rice Cooker by Korean design firm found/Founded by comparison is intentionally sparse in detail and options, a thoughtfully pared design extolling the virtues of “less as more.”
found/Founded’s small rice cooker is realized in opaque thermoplastic and amorphous polymer (aka ABS plastic), a gently tapered bowl shaped more closely like traditional stone vessels once used to cook rice rather than the squat and elongated shapes now associated with top electric models.
Bowld’s most conspicuous detail is its upper dial handle. Resembling a polished river stone, its smooth finish tempts eyes and hands toward the black dial. Give it a twist and it locks the rice cooker’s lid and forms a seal. Closed, the dial also regulates and directs steam output from the inner cooking pot safely toward the back while cooking.
The rice cooker’s simplicity is further underlined by its lone control button, thankfully uncomplicated by the icon-drawn hieroglyphics normally plastered or illuminated across many rice makers.
Bowld’s power cord can be looped to shorten its length or hide it completely from view.
Unfortunately for minimalist design aficionados Bowld is currently only a concept, one of numerous case studies showcasing found/Founded’s wide range of design solutions showcased across the Seoul-based design studio’s website.
What’s there left to say about Lee Friedlander? If a picture is worth a thousand words, he’s said it all.
The photographer, born in 1934, is one of the living legends of American photography, influential for his seminal urban landscapes and candid portraits. Shooting since the age of 14, Friedlander refers to photography as a habit more than an art practice, a reflexive response to being in the world.
Pink Lady has reimagined its sponsored category at this year’s Food Photographer of the Year awards to recognise photos that depict the joy experienced and shared through food.
The Pink Lady Moments of Joy category is a new addition for 2023 and invited portrayals of the intimate, special or ordinary moments of joy that are shared while growing, preparing, cooking or eating food. This year’s competition is now closed for entries.
The awards, which Pink Lady has headline sponsored since their inception in 2011, celebrate talent in the world of food photography, offering an insight into international food culture.
Lynn Shaw, senior marketing manager at Pink Lady, said: “As a brand, we believe in relishing the small joys in our lives, with the simple pleasure of food central to this, so we wanted this category to capture that.
“The Pink Lady Moments of Joy category is all about the joy we experience through food, from a simple bowl of noodles to gathering around a birthday cake and a bottle of champagne. Our hope was that this category would show a broad scope of snapshots with the common thread being a human connection to the food depicted.
“It was such a delight to see the broad range of emotions in the moments captured in the shortlisted images: from excitement and anticipation to pride, satisfaction and contentment.”
The Pink Lady Moments of Joy category has been whittled down to 14 shortlisted images, which are available to view on the awards website, and the winner will land a £1,500 prize.
The winners of all 25 awards categories will be announced on Tuesday 16 May 2023 in a privately screened film at BAFTA in London, which will be streamed across the world on the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year YouTube channel.
The awards, now in their 12th year, have received almost 10,000 entries from over 65 countries. The shortlists in each category are available to view here.
By: Lauren Weinberg, Chief Marketing Officer, Square
For CMOs specifically and marketers generally, determining where, when, and how to make marketing investments remains both art and science, even in our increasingly data-driven world.
As marketers, we shouldn’t expect to get everything right since we’re always adapting and evolving based on constantly changing industry and socio/macroeconomic factors. Still, while it should go without saying, but doesn’t, marketers need to be able to tie their investments to driving business results. Not all investments need to be tied to short term outcomes, but all investments do need to tie back to some business outcome.
In other words, for every marketing strategy and tactic, if you can’t clearly articulate what success means and how it effectively will be determined, don’t make the investment.
My advice, think about the balance between demand creation and demand capture. Create metric frameworks that combine short- and long-term success measures, including not just immediate transactions, but brand perception and consideration, which drive longer-term and sustainable performance and financial metrics. This helps you and your stakeholders understand and assess the intent and impact of your investments.
There is no such thing as the perfect measurement solution. Consumer patterns and the digital landscape move at the speed of culture, posing new challenges for marketers trying to accurately and absolutely measure ROI, especially when it comes to measuring brand marketing where there are fewer attributable touch points. Consequently, and in the absence of certainty, value progress over perfection. If this was easy, all brands would have figured it out already.
How do you do it? First, define your strategy for measuring short- and long-term goals. Then, test various technologies within your martech stack that might achieve these. Next, understand how these new technologies integrate with your existing stack, consider how each measures results, and how you’ll gauge and define success with each. Always continue to test and iterate and seek ways to improve your measurement inputs and outputs.
Finding insights in the data is where the tie of marketing investment to business results really lies. Data-driven insights will allow you to be more agile so you can either increase or contract spend as business performance varies. Take these insights and then push to evolve your measurement approach so it’s measuring what matters, not simply what it can.
Performance marketing will always be critical to generate leads and conversion, but performance and brand are not mutually exclusive and it’s still necessary to invest in long-term brand building to solidify awareness, steer perception, garner trust and generate demand. With only short-term performance orientation, you lose the ability to communicate brand values and distinctions, which are necessary in creating sustainable and long-term value.
While awareness investment undoubtedly returns value, there are a number of strategic approaches that drive awareness and consideration, each with their own strengths. The key is activating a mix for optimal growth velocity and investment efficiency. Increase investments in growing share of voice through new and organic channels, product seeding, events, and tradeshows, and earned media.
While brand marketing can be harder to measure, this shouldn’t put limitations on determining investment strategy, especially now, when economic uncertainty has led to media pricing efficiencies. It means brands have more opportunity to invest in market share capture.
Even with a well-defined strategy, brands need to be nimble so they can not only adapt in a moment but make space to experiment and try new things. Risk-taking should be in every marketing organization’s DNA.
With risk-taking celebrated, during planning you’ll be able to reserve time and budget to test new strategies, and tactics. Creativity loves constraint, economic and otherwise. Start by taking small principled risks so you can iterate and learn quickly without investing too heavily in a novel tactic that doesn’t pan out. Keep your ear to the ground on what matters most to your customers and lean in during moments that matter. A few examples include investing in hyper-local activations, influencers, and partnerships. Moving at the speed of culture requires agility and speed. When executed well, these activations build trust and demonstrate your commitment to understanding your customers.[1]
Regular reporting of efforts and results with your CEO, CFO and marketing organization is the key to advocating and influencing marketing investment. It’s important to over communicate, be transparent and accountable, and continue educating those who may not understand marketing as you do. Consistent updates highlighting objectives, approach, findings, learnings, and next steps keeps everyone aligned. By including what didn’t work, what did and what was learned enables everyone—and your marketing—to get better.
There is no “right” answer when it comes to marketing, and in today’s world, brands are being given the opportunity to return to a beginner’s mindset and find new, unique ways to achieve their goals. With smart and strategic investments, I am more bullish than ever on marketing’s ability to deliver growth.
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Lauren Weinberg is the Chief Marketing Officer of Square, where she leads global marketing and communications for the $80B company that provides technology and software solutions for millions of business owners all over the world.
