Antiqued prints of medical x-rays. A photogram of a stone recalling a ghostly human face. A discarded snakeskin, delicate and brittle, rendered in a digital print of a photogram.

Artist Jo Sandman, now 89, has spent a good part of her long career exploring themes of mortality, impermanence and transition. Her work points to the fragility of life and the bitter realization that we’re here for only one fleeting moment until, suddenly, we’re not.

That’s what makes Sandman’s work, on view at the Fitchburg Art Museum beginning July 22, poignantly appropriate for this pandemic moment. As we collectively face the