J.J. L’Heureux’s first trip to Antarctica twelve years ago was to take digital images of ice to use as models for a series color field paintings, “Ice Fields.” The recognition of the possibilities of Antarctica ice came to her a year before on a Nature Conservancy survey trip around Tierra del Fuego. While in Ushuaia she saw a Russian icebreaker expedition being advertised in the window of a travel agency. While standing on the sidewalk in Ushuaia looking at the icebreaker J.J. decided to cross the Southern Ocean. The Russian icebreaker was her first adventure in the Southern Ocean.
J.J. is an accomplished and widely shown fine artist who began her university work at Eastern Michigan University followed by courses at the San Francisco Art Institute. She also took specialized classes at Parsons School of Design in New York. On the first expedition to Antarctica J.J. was overjoyed by the sheer variety of ice forms, colors and types of ice all of which she photographed extensively. On this first trip she was introduced to four species of Penguin, Adelie, Gentoo, Macaroni, and Chinstrap, which inhabit the Antarctic Peninsula. The next year J.J. was on a rare crossing of the Weddell Sea by the Russian icebreaker, Kapitan Khlebnikov, that traveled down the South Sandwich Islands across the Weddell Sea to the Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf attached to Queen Maud Land and Coats Land. The expedition leadership was clear that such an itinerary was problematic and may not succeed but if it did there would be numerous Emperor Penguin rookeries to be visited.
The expedition was authentically historic. The weather was uncharacteristically perfect and the ship traversed the hundreds of kilometers of the Riiser-Larsen all the way to Halley Station making zodiac and helicopters landings in what seemed to be endless sunshine and cloudless days. Several very isolated research stations were visited that had never seen civilian travelers. Emperor Penguin rookeries provided amazing experiences and thousands of images. On the return trip the Captain initiated a course across the Weddell Sea similar to Shackelton’s Endurance voyage. This crossing had never been made because ice always blocked the way. There was spotty heavy sea ice in some areas, but it was a very successful crossing of the Weddell Sea to the Antarctic Sound.
This second expedition inspired J.J. to expand the range of her digital images throughout the Southern Ocean. To date she has made nine additional voyages and is signed on to visit East Antarctica and the Ross Sea in January 2011. Some of these voyages were as expedition artist and lecturer. Two trips were on a 65-foot motor sailor, the Golden Fleece, captained by either Jerome or Dion Poncet, to circumnavigate South Georgia Island. Two expeditions on the Spirit of Enderby took her from New Zealand through the Sub Antarctic Islands and Macquarie Island to photograph the rare penguins and albatrosses of that region. One trip was to initiate expeditions to the Snow Hill Emperor Penguin rookery that could be accessed shortly after the Larsen Ice Shelf disintegrated destroying a long established Emperor Penguin rookery there. J.J. spent time in the Falkland Islands photographing the numerous penguin rookeries and other sea birds. On another occasion she joined a South African research project on Robben Island working with the African Penguins located there.
Numerous museum exhibitions of her images have been seen across the United States. She gives lectures on her work in the Southern Ocean and has been invited to speak several times in China.