Rivers and TIdes

In the film “Rivers and Tides” Goldsworthy spoke of “obsessive forms.” From watching the footage, I understood these to be forms that are recurrent in nature. It seemed as though he related a lot of his artwork to the shape of the rivers that he was working near, at times it was a snake-like form and at others it was a tide pool form similar to that of the salmon hole. He then spoke of being uprooted and creating new roots. I interpreted this to mean that his travel caused him to be uprooted, and then he had to create new roots for himself by immediately throwing himself into his artwork without researching his new environment. It seemed as though this related to the bodies of water that he based a lot of his work off of. The tides are always changing, and because of this his art transforms as well.

When Goldsworthy begins to create a work on a rock with icicles, he begins to talk about potential and the excitement of discovery. I thought it was interesting because when the sun began to shine, it shone on both sides of the rock, unexpectedly illuminating the ice on both sides. Even though he was excited about the unknown potential of his piece that was then revealed to him, he also knew that the same thing that brought his work to life will also cause its death. The sun was going to eventually cause the ice, that was in the shape of a frozen river, flowing around the rock, into water. Another time this happened was when he was creating the tide pool-like structure near the salmon hole. The land provided the wood he was working with, and the salmon hole provided the inspiration, but later the salmon hole took the piece back. However, the salmon hole wasn’t destroying the work, it was taking it off onto another plane and turning it into another work.

When nature eventually takes his works back into itself, he doesn’t feel like it is destruction. It seemed to me that destruction is a word that seems to imply an intentional or malicious act. With the works that Goldsworthy is creating, they are only meant to last for as long as nature will allow. I thought a good example of this was when he created the egg like structure near the water. When the tide came in, he spoke of how he didn’t create it to be destroyed by the sea but to be a gift to the sea. He thought that he still had a connection to the piece and that the sea would make more of it that he could have. He thought that this was the same with life, sometimes there are upheavals and shock, but they shape a person as a body of work, shaping them in a way that they would not be able to do on their own. I think this was also shown when he was creating the work that came off of the tree almost like a curtain. He spoke of how there is a beauty in the balance of taking a work to the edge of collapse. Even though it eventually was pushed too far, I think this is also the same as in life because in order to know something’s true capacity for what it can hold it needs to be pushed to the edge.

When he was working on the beach, he spoke of how the beach has always been a great teacher about time. The tide causes restrictions on how long a work can be created. The beach also showed him a sense of uncertainty. The materials he was working with didn’t allow him to complete the work that he was creating because either the dampness of the sand or the weakness of the rocks kept causing it to fall. This didn’t seem to deter him, he instead spoke of how he liked working in situations where total certainty and structure was not available. He said he felt this way because total control can be the death of a work. The stones taught him that the real work was in understanding the stones. The stones grew in proportion to his understanding of them. Because of this, his failures gradually taught him about the importance of understanding the place and the materials that he was working with.

Goldsworthy created a lot of egg-like structures out of ice and stone. He spoke of how people often use stone structures as markers. When these works were placed in a museum, they still looked amazing because of the craftsmanship that I knew had to go into them. When I saw them in nature, they seemed more extraordinary. When I saw the tide and the plants overtaking the pieces, watched the elements cover up and then give them back, it seemed much more miraculous than the pieces did in the museum.

The sheep in the area the Goldsworthy lives have caused the land to become absent of trees. They have had a deep impact on the way that the land looks, but the people who live there have a perception of the sheep that is different than reality. This perception causes it to be hard to work with the sheep because they are perceived as simply being wooly animals, but in actuality they are very powerful animals. They have been the cause of political and social upheaval, people have been moved off the land in the past in order to allow the sheep to move on. It seemed to go back to the cliché that you cannot judge a book by its cover. The sheep seemed to be docile and unable to create change, but they have actually caused deep changes in that area.

It seemed like the absence of what was can be recorded in the landscape not only by what can be seen, but as Joe Sternfels pointed out, by what we can remember. Goldsworthy spoke of creating works surrounding holes. They show that life ebbs and flows, and it is wonderful to look into the darkness and see growth coming out of it. Looking at a landscape that no longer contains what it used to can show what may be to come.