R i v e r s and T i d e s

There was something so soothing about the video of Rivers and Tides. The sound of the water, the crack and snap of the wood. It all brought me closer to the artist's hands, it reminded me of my grandfather and when he would work on his ranch. I remember him telling me that there was something so satisfying about working with your hands, creating something, something tangible, something that anyone could use and appreciate, something that was well made and that could last forever. My grandfather was a contractor, yet he never physically built the buildings himself. He watched. He said that he envied his workers because they made something tangible. Something that they could go home feeling satisfied with. They could go home and say they created something for someone else. Something that will last.

Andy Goldsworthy is an artist, a teacher, a father and a lover of the out doors. He seems to enjoy the morning and the solitude that it brings. The coming and going, the ebb and the flow, the balance between destruction and creation. Andy's art is exactly that. Like my grandfather, he works with his hands. However, his art does not last. When working with icicles, he included that working with gloves, despite that it was bitterly cold outside, restricted him from the proper attention to his art.

"I am influenced by the rivers and the ocean", he said. And in response, his art clearly mimics his inspiration. His icicle creation lasted minutes, much like a song, building slowly to its crescendo lit by the sun behind it, and then its demise, it fell. It was amazing to watch the ice glow in contrast to the rock it was glued to. It seemed as if it was once piece of radioactive material. It is that fleeting and precious quality of his work that makes it so unique and special. But the fleeting quality of it is also tragic, because only he or sometimes a passerby are the only who witness his work. Andy commented about its particular quality of it being created and destroyed by what it was created by.

Though his work may flee the mind, his work does not escape documentation. With every work, Andy documents the final creation by photographing it. Whether it was good or bad, its film negative sits gingerly in his workshop behind all his other works, documented, organized and placed against light tables. The photos of his work deliver an appropriate message to how strong photography can be. Not about the technical capabilities, but about its ability to capture something as fleeting as the ocean's tide, a pigment of read amongst a slew of water, an icicle burnt by the sun, a collection of sticks blowing in the wind.

Though I probably shouldn't have, I found it particularly interesting, amusing, and tragic when one of his pieces collapsed while he was creating it. You could see a real connection in the despair of his face. He really felt disappointed. Unlike a mistake made in the comfort of a studio where in the mediums photography, painting, or sculpture can be repaired; his ability to repair is replaced by rebuilding. Every time one of his works fails, he must start again, from the beginning. But in the end, proved by meticulous and delicate work, his masterpiece and crescendo come full force. You see the beauty of his work framed against the nature that has both created and will destroy the piece. It is this connection and relationship that he has with the land that keeps him coming back for more. It is not the land that needs Andy, as he puts it, but it is he who needs the land. I think in that understanding is what every artist should be humbled by. Too much do I see, or even that I believe myself has created something special from something bleak or mundane. We have yes, but it has also been set forth for us, created by something other than the forces within ourselves. Like the rocks that created his eggs, our subjects are randomly placed in front, sitting there only for us to manipulate and interpret through our own medium.

His artistry reminds me of the character Howard Roark of the novel "The Fountainhead", by Ayn Rand. The novel is based loosely on the genre of architecture and the creative process behind it. But what really stands out is the singular creative vision of Howard Roark, the individual against society. Howard says, "I do not create in order to have clients, but that I have clients in order to create". It is this same principle that I believe Andy is driven by. Its almost as if the land has commissioned him to make his work. Just as Roark needs his clients to commission and inspire his work, Andy needs his land to commission and inspire his also. In his description of the and that was flattened by the sheep, he pays homage to that destruction through a line of sheep wool that acts as a metaphor for the control and dominance of the sheep on the land. Much like Roark also, Andy is really set upon the world as an individual. His work is mostly done by himself with the help of others occasionally and sparingly. Hs work is a representation of his singular vision of the world, and my god is it beautiful.

As I have been alluding to architecture, his work draws the lines and shapes, much like the modern and contemporary architects; from nature and the rhythms it creates. Frank Lloyd Wright believed that his work, especially his work "Falling Water", was meant to be a part of the world around it. Andy too, feels the same way. His piece made of swirling branches imitates the forms and rhythms of the tide pool it eventually becomes apart of. It is that symbiosis and cooperation of nature and man that is a balance that I find particularly attractive. It is something that I believe our world should look further into.