A gentle hissing emerges from the wire of nozzles hanging from the branches above me. Billowing clouds of fog drift to the ground, obscuring everything in a thick white vapor. I glance behind me and see the fog wrapping its tendrils around the trees and skating across the calm water. Every person I pass, as the fog settled, has the same face filled with laughter and pure childlike joy that many of us have not experienced in so long.
This whimsical and mesmerizing display of fog is the creation of 85-year-old Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya who has pioneered this art style of fog sculpture, her first at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka. Nakaya was inspired by her father and his work in glaciology and snow crystal photography. She continued her father’s artistic work employing water that brings a sense of wonder in everyday weather patterns.
Nakaya’s experimental artwork has dazzled people globally for decades and now, from August 11 to October 31, her works are in Boston as part of the 20th anniversary of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.
“The Emerald Necklace Conservancy’s role is to promote, preserve, and restore the parks created by Frederick Olmstead Law,” says Judy MacNeill, a volunteer at Emerald Necklace Conservancy. She will have been with the Conservancy for 9 years this spring. “Nakaya’s art exhibit helps promote the Emerald Necklace by bringing awareness to Olmstead and his art.”
In Fog x Flo: Fujiko Nakaya on the Emerald Necklace, Nakaya’s art responds to the environment surrounding it, paying homage to Frederick Law Olmstead’s landscape design of the Emerald Necklace. Like Olmstead, a preservationist and landscape artist who designed parks like Central Park in New York City, Nakaya wishes to enhance the beauty of the parks rather than distract from it.
The installation at the Back Bay Fens, called Fog x Canopy, is one of five locations of the Fog x FLO exhibit and appears every hour and half hour from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“This exhibit is truly amazing,” says Hannah Kitchel. She and her friend Jessica Cooper, both graduate students at Boston University, came to visit the art exhibit. “It was unlike any other art experience I’ve ever had. It interacted with the water and the trees and our immediate surroundings.”
According to the Emerald Necklace Conservancy website, Nakaya considers fog to be “the most generous medium” in that it allows for endless interaction and collaboration that extends its beauty into all forms of media. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy, as a result, has a full schedule of “fog performances” in which artists working in media ranging from dance to light shows, music to visual art can perform alongside the fog sculpture.
Artists in any media are welcome to perform alongside Nakaya’s fog sculptures. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy is accepting proposals that “will inspire and enhance from a broad appreciation of these natural settings.” Grant support for performances range from $500 to $2000 and will be awarded for inspiring content, promising impact, and demonstrated need.