Andy Goldsworthy: At play in the fields of the lord

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Time works differently for children. They have such long, busy days. Each day at school is an eternity of tedious lessons and tasteless fishsticks. And then, when they're at last released from captivity - still in mid-afternoon - there's time yet for naps, time for cartoons, time to mount an expedition into the wilds of the backyard, to dig deep grooves in the soil, to fill the grooves with piles of crunchy leaves, to run the garden hose for hours and see what happens. In a child's day, there is time enough to build your own little world out of the puddles and rocks and twigs that most adults step over, barely noticing, as they rush through days that can seem like they're over before they've begun.

Artist Andy Goldsworthy looks at puddles and rocks and twigs with a child's imagination and sense of possibilities, but he brings to his work a patience and precision that is profoundly adult. Goldsworthy lavishes hours on his creations, briefly bending nature to his will as he connects icicles into an intricate, abstract sculpture, twists twigs into a mesmerizing web, or otherwise commits what hippie bumper stickers would describe as senseless acts of beauty. Sometimes nature cooperates, allowing Goldsworthy time to work his magic. Other times nature harshly reasserts herself before the artist is through, and his hard work is swept away by the merciless tide, blown to bits by the unthinking winds, or it just plain flops over and melts. If Goldsworthy is lucky, he's managed to take some beautiful photographs before his creation descends back into the muck from which it came. Otherwise, he just starts all over again, piling stone upon stone, twig upon twig.

The clip below, from the fascinating documentary Rivers and Tides, features Goldsworthy at work, trying to coax a clump of twigs into a spiderweb-like design.



Even those who dismiss all abstract art with a sneer of "my kid could draw that" usually can't help being fascinated by Goldsworthy's rock piles or icicle works. His ideas speak to the yearning primitive within us all, to that first ape who impressed his handprint into the wet earth outside his cave one prehistoric morning and then stood back to wonder at what he'd done.

If you've never seen Goldsworthy's work, it's hard to do it justice with words—he sounds like some hippie weirdo who makes piles of stones on the beach. And, let's be honest, that's kind of what he is. But he is also a truly brilliant artist. And a kid with time on his hands.

(This post originally appeared, in an altered form, as an article for OC WEEKLY.)

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About This Blog

"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden

Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?

Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.

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