Fogscapes

For nearly five decades, fog artist Fujiko Nakaya ’57 has presented her ethereal, shape-shifting installations of pure water vapor in an effort to connect humans to nature. Last summer she created a site-specific installation in the five parks of Boston’s Emerald Necklace system. Nakaya, who considers fog “the most generous of mediums,” presented her first fog sculpture at the Pepsi Pavilion during the Osaka Expo 1970. The daughter of physicist Ukichiro Nakaya, who created the world’s first artificial snow crystals, Fujiko was born in Sapporo, Japan. She earned an art degree from Northwestern in 1957 and later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 2018 she received the Praemium Imperiale, a global arts prize awarded by the Japan Art Association.

Fujiko Nakaya explains the nozzle used to create her Fog x Flo installation throughout Boston's Emerald Necklace last fall.