FOCUS WALL - PUBLIC ART PIECE

DATES -  OCTOBER - DECEMBER, 2021

FEATURED ARTIST: Fern Nesson

"All Here, All Now"

Here, now is all we have. We bring all of our past to the present moment and within us is all of the potential for the future.

Our subjective experience of time is continuous and uniform, emerging from the past and flowing toward the future. But Einstein proved that time varies relative to the speed of light, slowing down or speeding up depending upon our own trajectory through space. And Buddhists say time is cyclical, always repeating. Some physicists even assert that, given the right conditions, time may flow backwards.

As a scientist, Fern Nesson lines up with Einstein; spiritually, she feels kinship with Buddhism. Like all of us, Fern experiences the forward flow of time's arrow, rushing her all too fast into her future. But, as a photographer, she doesn't have to choose sides. For her, the debate is both infinitely interesting and totally beside the point. Whatever we believe the nature of time to be, we have only the present moment in which to experience it. Living in that moment and capturing its essence in an image is reward enough.

These images are Fern's way of communicating that we have only the present moment. We cannot relive the past and the future will never come. When and if we get there, it will be the present. All here, all now.

Fern L. Nesson is a fine art photographer who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in Photography from Maine Media College (2018), a J.D. from Harvard Law School (1971), and an M.A. in American History from Brandeis University (1987).

Fern's spare photographs distill reality to its essence, highlighting its energy through placement of forms and the use of abstraction. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France, the MIT Museum, the MetaLab at Harvard, the Beacon Gallery in Boston, the Auburn Gallery in Los Angeles and on artsy.net. Additionally, her work has been selected for juried exhibitions at galleries and museums in Boston, New York, Rome, Budapest, Los Angeles, Middlebury, Vt., Wichita, and Rockport, Maine.

Fern's photobook, Signet of Eternity, was the recipient of the 10th Annual Photobooks Award and shown at the Davis-Orton Gallery (December 2019) and the Griffin Museum (2020). She is also a National Associate of The LivingNewDeal.org, for whom she writes a regular column of historical photo essays and a contributing editor to BonjourParis.com, writing photo essays on art and culture.

Image on the Focus Wall can be purchased as a Digital Inkjet Print, 16" X 16", $1,200, edition of 36.