Andy Goldsworthy

Are you familiar with Andy Goldsworthy's ephemeral work? It seems as though beings from another world created these. I have been quite in awe of his work now for a couple of years. He draws his inspiration from nature herself and uses his hands and his incredibly sound patience to create these natural masterpieces that over time will go back into the earth where they came from. No tricks here; honesty, time, vision and steadfast determination. He also will humbly speak of the many days that he doesn't accomplish his vision, or even come close, which I sympathize with (then again don't we all?). See for yourself here.

"For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches.

Movement, change, light growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue.

The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and the space within."

-A.G.