Clouds on the ground, dispersing on the surface, changing with the wind and the light. Taking shapes, they disappear in the air while creating playful spaces. A performative landscape for immersion, interactivity, and movement outside of fixed screens or cavases. Designed by Fujiko Nakaya, the fog sculptures at the Emerald Necklace are wonderful pieces of art, full of joy, rhythm, and mystery. They are paradoxical, difficult to photograph and to describe. They change and are never the same, like memories of a form that is always changing, loosing focus, dissolving.
I have tried to capture them a couple of days this fall, with mixed results given their slippery nature. Mist, fog, clouds, are in a way inapprehensible. They are dreamy stages of vision. Sfumatos.
The scale of the sculptures varies according to the location and to the point of view of the spectator. The closer to the origin of the cloud, the more immersive the experience become. One could even get soaked by the amount of water that is triggered when the sculpture starts. Tiny water drops are sparkled on the air, from customized hoses with hundreds of holes. The hoses operate as fountains. They have been carefully arranged in threes at the different locations, sometimes hidden in the woods, other times visible.
Although the sculptures (Fog x Flo) have been installed since last August, I have visited them until this month. At this moment the fall colors have started to paint the landscape, with leaves, clouds, and early sunsets. The sight where the five sculptures are displayed couldn’t be better. The Emerald Necklace is a wonderful piece of public infrastructure designed 100 years ago by architect Frederick Law Olmsted. It is composed of six different parks interconnected, and with walking trails for exploring them. The location of the fog sculptures is an invitation to explore the necklace, to walk it, to trace it.
Experiencing art outside of the screens is a relief. Part of the joy of the fog sculptures is how they become part of the landscape, connecting threes, rivers, ponds, ducks, seagulls, herons, and humans in a beautiful public arrangement. The sculptures are displayed every 30 minutes, from 8am to 6pm. Although some of them are difficult to find, with some lucky and serendipity one could arrive to the location right at the moment where they are performing.
The fog sculptures (fog x flo) would be on display and performance until October 31st.
What is the distinction in between a Inventive Composing greatest and a Innovative Producing focus?