Photography by Marsha Wilcoxwill be on exhibit in the library’s Meeting Room Gallery during the months of September and October 2025.
The artist says of her work:
My father used a sextant for celestial navigation on aircraft carriers in the Navy and on family sailing trips. He taught me to see the constellation pictures, stellar landmarks, and stories in the stars. I’ve loved looking at the night sky all my life. As a child I would lie on the grass, or on a snowbank, and look up into the darkness and wonder what was out there, willing myself with all my might to visit the cosmos – hearing the siren song that has called humanity to look to the heavens since the dawn of time.
As sailors and travelers once used the celestial landscape to find their way, the night sky can still lead us to reflect on our humanity and place in the universe. In this time of relentless news-cycles, political unrest and social turmoil, the majesty of the universe reminds me that although we are transient and insignificant, we are connected to something infinitely larger and timeless. Stars, nebulae, and distant galaxies live their lives at a pace immune to human urgency. In this I find peace … and perhaps even hope.
On clear, calm, nights when the moon is dim, I wheel my telescope out to image the universe from my home in Acton. Using telescopes as lenses with dedicated astronomy cameras and specialized filters, I collect the ancient light of celestial objects invisible to the naked eye. These wonders are unimaginably old, unfathomably distant, and incomprehensibly vast. Long exposure photography is the only way we can experience these awe-inspiring celestial scenes. Each final photograph is constructed from individual images captured over many tens of hours. It’s not unusual for the final photograph to contain 100 or more frames. In these images, there is art in the science, and science in the art.
An award-winning artist, Marsha’s photography has appeared in galleries, museums and other venues in New England and beyond including the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Fitchburg Art Museum, The Art Center, Three Columns Gallery at Harvard, Boston Convention Center, and the Foley Gallery in New York City. Her work currently appears in the Big Picture Colorado 2025-27. Her images have been published in magazines and books including Artscope and a collection published by LensWork, among others.
A retired epidemiologist, Marsha also holds a Master of Professional Studies in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She usually images the night sky from her home in Acton in the company of three wonderful Golden Retrievers.
For more information on Marsha Wilcox’s work, visit: https://www.marshawilcox.com/
Exhibitions are free and handicapped accessible. Exhibitions in the library Meeting Room are available for viewing whenever the library is open and the room is not in use for a meeting. Please check the library’s Program Calendar for availability.
At the beginning of each year, the Arts Committee of the Acton Memorial Library invites Massachusetts artists to submit work for consideration for upcoming exhibitions in the Meeting Room Gallery. More information is available on the library’s Artists Exhibition Opportunity page.