“The Emerald Necklace is a dynamic and evolving work of art. In Boston, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and his collaborators applied their skill, creativity, and imagination to sculpt waterways and landscapes that inspire, calm, and uplift in a growing 19th-century city. Today, Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya (born 1933) continues this legacy. Her climate-responsive fog sculptures placed throughout the Emerald Necklace appear natural but are carefully crafted, just like Olmsted’s parks. Though separated by over a century, Nakaya and Olmsted’s ambitious work with water both illuminate the relationships between the natural and artificial. Olmsted was a master of perceiving and highlighting the “genius of place” – a landscape’s many individual elements that together create a unique experience of a site. Likewise, Nakaya’s site-specific fog sculptures vividly manifest both landscapes’ and weather’s unseen forces.”
Excerpt from FogxFLO Exhibition curated by Jen Mergel
