nurtures not just appreciation but a sense of responsibility, an urgency to protect these fragile ecosystems before they dissolve into memory. Foster’s approach — the souvenirs, the map fragments, the latitudinal and longitudinal markers, the journal entries — and his commitment to lace up his boots, buckle his backpack, and tuck in his tiny tray of paints, confirms to young people that they too can find their “oasis in a hectic world.” More than that, it suggests they have a duty to care for it. Learning to see time differently means understanding that we are not just observers but active participants — each decision a brushstroke on the future. Initially, students experience Foster as if he were a magician — a Prospero-like plein air painter conjuring images in impossible conditions: underwater in a scuba suit, hunched near a volcano, camping in the extreme cold, wandering an arid desert, enveloped by rainforest clouds. But as students spend more time with his work, they realize that Foster is not Prospero. He is not bending nature to his will; he is listening, witnessing, recording. His art, inspired by the “sublime beauty of the wilderness,” is not just an act of seeing but an act of reverence. Foster’s work reminds us that to truly see the world is to take responsibility for it — and that in recognizing our place in time, we also recognize our power to shape what comes next. Foster’s signature souvenirs — clips of maps, samples of sediment, a seed pod tucked within the frame — offer tangible and intentional anchors to time against vast and fragile landscapes. These artifacts transform his paintings into portals, each an invitation to time travel. Students imagine the precise moment Foster decided to pick something up or let it be reclaimed by the earth. As they examine these souvenirs, they begin to see their own choices — what they hold onto, what they let go — as shaping forces in the larger narrative of time. What does it mean to mark a moment in time within a landscape in constant flux — where wind, water, tectonic shifts, and climate change rewrite the terrain? What does it mean to stand in a space that is both enduring and ephemeral, timebound and timeless — a space shaped by natural forces yet increasingly altered by human impact? This intersection speaks to the adolescent journey — the space of feeling invincible and fragile, caught between the urgency of now and the slow pull of what’s to come. In engaging with Foster’s artifacts, students glimpse their own agency. They begin to recognize that the choices they make — what they preserve, what they let go of — are part of a much larger, unfolding story. Their lives, like Foster’s souvenirs, are evidence of impact, of participation in the unfolding story of time. The span of Foster’s immersive wilderness Journeys are time markers documenting landscapes that exist on the precipice of both permanence and loss. His work asks us to consider geological and ecological timescales — to under- stand that the natural processes shaping our planet unfold over vast periods, far beyond human perception. Foster serves as a bridge to adolescent minds, inviting them to shift their perception of time and to begin to see that conservation and ecological engagement is not just about protecting the past — it’s about ensuring a livable future, one that they have the power to influence. This perspective Artifacts of Attention: Tony Foster’s Art Teaches Students About Time and Choice Sara Whalen Shifrin ASSOCIATE HEAD OF SCHOOL FOR STRATEGY AND TALENT GOULD ACADEMY When introducing Tony Foster’s art in a high school human geography class, I tear a length of painter’s tape, mapping out the true dimensions of his work on the whiteboard. When the projector hums to life, casting its glow over the borders, the watercolors — fluid yet deliberate — spill into view. Without fail, a student exclaims, “That’s huge! It must have taken forever.” I let the moment settle before asking, “Do you mean Foster’s brushwork stretched over weeks and months? Or that the canyon, the river bend, the weathered cliffs took millennia to form?” And just like that, we step into time’s slipstream — pulled between the immediacy of creation and the deep-time choreography of the planet itself. For adolescents, time is both glacial and fleeting — an eternity waiting for the weekend, a blink before summer dissolves. Foster, standing sentinel in the wilderness, reminds us that landscapes shift, erode, and recover: that the past seeps into the present, and the present, whether we mark it or not, is already vanishing into history. His work invites young minds to consider time not as a straight line but as a diverse system of influences — revealing that their choices, like geological shifts, leave lasting imprints on the future. If we can learn to see time not as something to race against, but as something we are part of, then we can begin to shape the future with intention. 105
