ABOUT THE ART 

Provost Locke chose to feature this art after seeing it on display at the Watson Institute Art@Watson exhibit, The Blink of Our Lifetimes: The Ecology of Dusk.

This image: Dusk Series, Lightfall Triptych, 2015
Moved-camera digital photographs (non-computer generated)
From the artist: These three images observe similar conditions of light and impending dusk in dissimilar locations. Those on the left were taken in Oregon’s half-million acre Coast Range Forest, until 100 years ago an old growth forest of 3000 years’ standing, now mostly logged and replanted. The image on the right was taken in Ty Canol Wood in Pembrokeshire, Wales, a rare, primeval woodland of 170 acres, un-intruded upon since the last glaciation. (Wales was almost entirely cleared of forests by the year 1000.) Both places are dense with trunks, branches, mosses, and lichen, bringing astronomical dusk to their interiors even though civil twilight has just begun its descent beyond them. My lens found the last shards of daylight through the trees and drew one temporal experience down into another. If you need any more information on the Dusk Series itself, please let me know.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Pamela Petro ’82 is an author, artist, and educator living in Northampton, MA. She received her MA from the University of Wales, where she is a Fellow and directs the Dylan Thomas Summer School in Creative Writing. She teaches creative writing at Smith College and in Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. She was a 2011 Artist in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park, and is the author of several books. 

Please listen to a recent Watson Institute podcast with Pamela Petro, "Ecology, History and Photograph," or visit her website to learn more.