Frozen paint, playing Frisbee at the South Pole, meeting penguins and experiencing the fast-moving environmental changes facing the continent were just some of the highlights of the first-hand account Malvern Prep students received of an artist’s trip to the most unforgiving, but shockingly beautiful environments on the planet.

On Earth Day, Colin Campbell, a 2004 graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, spoke to a large audience of students at the Rev. David J. Duffy, O.S.A Arts Center about his three-month journey to Antarctica. Campbell was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers’ Program to document the Antarctic landscape with paintings, drawings and photographs. He and his father, Alan Campbell, have exhibited the work from their expedition throughout the United States and New Zealand, and their work has been featured in many galleries.

In addition to his address at the Duffy Center, Campbell spoke to individual art classes about not only the challenges of working in such a harsh environment, but also of the inspiration, awe and wonder of the “ethereal ice world,” as Campbell called Antarctica. Campbell also exhibited a small display of his paintings from Antarctica in the Duffy Center for the whole week for the Malvern community to enjoy and study.

Kate Plows, the Malvern art teacher who organized the visit, was impressed with Campbell’s presentation and encouraged by the role that art can play in helping the environment.

“Colin’s story always reminds me that a career in the arts is not often a point-A to point-Z sort of route - sometimes it diverges as far away as the South Pole!” Plows said.  “Colin is an artist and an adventurer, but also a regular guy, and I really appreciate that he spent the rest of the day in our department, answering student questions informally. In my own follow-up conversations with students and faculty, I heard respect, curiosity and concern for Antarctica and other places facing the same sorts of environmental changes. I'm excited that the arts could help facilitate that dialogue.”

Campbell currently works both as a digital artist for Big Huge Games, a video game production company in Maryland, and as a freelance painter. He and his father published an article in The Explorer Journal about their trip in the Fall 2006 edition.