I just recently viewed the film Rivers and Tides, which documents the artistic process of the site-specific sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. Though I’ve been a fan of his work for many years, I was so inspired to experience his ideas, his environment, and his connections with the materials which are provided to him by nature alone. He states in the documentary that ”I thinks it’s incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.” The fact that, for the most part, his creations are fleeting and impermanent adds to their magic. They are created solely to be destroyed by their environment, and to return to the state in which they were found. They will melt, fall, and be taken away by the tide. Their moment of realization from concept, no matter how brief, is what Goldsworthy seeks. He doesn’t want to interrupt the natural progression of his chosen environment. He states, “My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds — what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.”

“Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one’s self by entering into the real sense of things.”

“Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work.”

“I find some of my new works disturbing, just as I find nature as a whole disturbing. The landscape is often perceived as pastoral, pretty, beautiful – something to be enjoyed as a backdrop to your weekend before going back to the nitty-gritty of urban life. But anybody who works the land knows it’s not like that. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn’t walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.”