Rebecca Nemser

Thanks to all the Artists and Friends who inspired me along the Way. 

Hans Weg­n­er, the leg­endary Dan­ish fur­ni­ture-mak­er, always worked with nat­ur­al mate­ri­als like wood and wool, and his fur­ni­ture reflects both the nat­ur­al world and abstract art; you can see traces of Bran­cusi and Picas­so in it, as well as ani­mals and trees. He designed more than five hun­dred chairs dur­ing his long and illus­tri­ous career. One of them belongs to me.

“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own con­ve­nience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the con­tigu­ous impres­sions that com­posed our life at the time; the mem­o­ry of a par­tic­u­lar image is but regret for a par­tic­u­lar moment; and hous­es, roads, avenues are as fugi­tive, alas, as the years.”

Some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pened when the micro­phone was turned on: all my doubts dis­ap­peared. I devel­oped the habit of read­ing every­thing out loud, so my writ­ing became more nat­ur­al and tuned into my voice. I had a huge audi­ence. For the first time in my life, peo­ple were lis­ten­ing to what I had to say, and I loved it.

In 1979, an 11th cen­tu­ry Per­sian poem with 50,000 rhyming cou­plets, illu­mi­nat­ed by tiny paint­ings in exquis­ite col­ors made from crushed jew­els and insect­s’ wings, inspired my first sto­ry about art. For the next 20 years, I wrote, pub­lished, and broad­cast hun­dreds of Sto­ries about Art in Boston and beyond. This is how it all began.