Immersing into the Soul of "earthworks" with Andy Goldsworthy

    Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor living in Scotland who creates Land Art.  In Rivers and Tides, a soul-stimulating film shot in four countries and across four seasons using natural materials such as driftwood, ice, mud, leaves, and stones.  His choice of medium is specific to hearing the messages from nature, Goldsworthy said amidst his earthwork, "The stone speaks through its weight disbursement". At this moment the art becomes a meditation Goldsworthy has the audience acknowledge the need for total control is equal to the death of his work.

    Below is a small collection of his earthworks compiled into a three-minute video.  If you are a student at CSUS and want to watch the whole video go onto Elaine O'Brien's Art 112 Contemporary Art Videos list.  Scroll down the page and then you click the fourth video Rivers and Tides.  For those not enrolled I found a 45:07 minute video on a French-designed site https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15e83f.  Another website, Door of Perception, features Goldsworthy's earthworks from the film in photos https://doorofperception.com/2016/03/andy-goldsworthy-working-with-time/ . 

    Throughout the creating process, Goldsworthy relies on his assistants to gather materials from the landscape.  As he begins the individual materials seem insignificant to the everyday person hiking through nature but as time passes the stones, driftwood, ice, mud, or leaves become a larger composition.

    The meditation I mentioned is witnessed by Goldsworthy's wave of emotions; there come multiple points in his travels when the earthwork falls in, "Where do we go from here?" I ask myself.  His response is to start by removing the materials leaving an open space to recreate.  Each time the structure crumbles he learns a lesson about not understanding the material yet.  These examinations of deep conscious thoughts can be applied to one's life through bringing silence into one's environment; if the environment is too loud such as city life become inventive creating new places within nature to do listen.  In this personal space, many intimate teachings and answers can begin to open the allegorical doors of perception. 

    Nature's messages are guardians protecting a deeper truth. Goldsworthy mentions, "these structures are not made to destroy, the sea takes this gift and recycles it back to its natural beauty."