River and Tides

Although I have seen "River and Tides" a few times before I am always struck how, each time I view it, I discover something new that I didn't notice before. This is rather like Andy Goldworthy's approach to making art; experiencing something you think you know but discovering something unknown.

It feels to me as if Goldsworthy is always waiting for the perfect 'time', whether it be the right season for him to collect the materials he uses or knowing when to stop something he is building, bringing it right to the edge of collapse.

When Goldsworthy is travelling, he feels like he needs to go to work as soon as he arrives in a strange place. He sees the form he is obsessed with (the river) all over the world yet it is not 'his' river, it is familiar but foreign to him. Goldsworthy says that the tide is repeated all around the world yet working on the shores of Canada he feels disconnected from his home place and is a stranger there. I feel like Goldsworthy has to make work somewhere in order for him to understand the place that he is in. While he is working on the shore he discovers that the place he has built his sculpture just happens to catch the early morning light, making the icicles glow beautifully. This element of serendipity seems to be ever present in his work but I am not convinced that he does not know how things are going to turn out. Goldsworthy uses the warmth from his hands to melt the ice just enough for it to stick to another piece of ice but ultimately it is the warmth from the morning sun which will destroy his sculpture. There's really nothing I can think of in my own life at this time to compare to this situation as it feels very unique to me.

At times Goldsworthy seems content with the destruction of his work but at other times it seems to infuriate him. The 'salmon hole' floating away from him makes me feel content yet the bracken sculpture collapsing on him frustrates him. Perhaps this has something to do with his ability to take something to the edge of collapse and then step back from it. When Goldsworthy feels he has completed something he is happy to let the elements take it away from it.

Goldsworthy's education at an Art college stifled him creatively, it felt wrong for him to be secluded inside when what he was attracted to was happening outside in the elements, particularly Morecambe Bay. What's interesting to me is that this is one of the first creative things I did when I went to Art college in England. We took a trip to St. Ives and spent two days working on the beach. Much like Goldsworthy trying to finish his seed form before the tide came in us students all tried to finish our ceramic pieces before the tide came in and I literally ran away from the roaring sea with my hands dripping in clay, my piece sucked into the tide.

Something about being secure in a place can mean that you aren't really looking at what's around you, it is so known to you that you don't bother to look for the unknown.

Each time you fail at doing something, you learn more about how to do whatever is it you were trying to do so that the next time you try, you have a head-start. I feel this way about the work I did in my project for Advanced Photography last year. Every time I tried to photograph these gummy army men I didn't quite get it right but towards the end of the project I was close to achieving what I had set out to do. I spent each weekend holed up in the light studio trying to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong and each experiment brought me closer to figuring it out.

Goldsworthy makes pieces that are out on site but also his work can be inside, like the work in the Museum. Although his work seems connected to the places he creates it in, the work in the museum feels disconnected from those places. The use of the clay helps this disconnect because it is a substance taken out of its place.

The land of the British Isles looks the way it does because of a thousand years of farming, some of that due to sheep-herding but mostly from agrarian activity. What I found interesting is that (I'm fairly sure he didn't mention this) the stonewalling method found in the north of Britain is the same method he uses to make his seed form and also the wall in New York. This method of wall building came from the north of England and was used more or less exclusively to keep sheep in. This is another connection from Goldsworthy's home place to his work sites and it's interesting that he didn't mention it. These walls really mark the absence of the herds that were once there and the families that herded them. I have some family that live in and around Rochdale in the north of England. When we would visit up there we often drove around the countryside and I spent endless hours staring out of the car window. There are falling down houses in those abandoned fields, traces that mark the place where a history was once made. It is sad but also gratifying that those who took from the earth are able to give back to it. The earth always reclaims. It seems to me that Goldsworthy is interested in the inbetween state of things, always returning to the earth but existing in one moment outside of that erosion.