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Sunday, August 27, 2006

Artistic inspiration for the week:


After long last, I finally got to watch Andy Goldworthy’s “Rivers and Tides” on DVD. He is an ephemeral, environmental artist that lives in Scotland, and if you are not familiar with his work you MUST find a book of his and go immerse yourself in his vision and the wonders of light and natural materials…

The DVD is a lovely, magical view of the artistic process. A few quotes:

“Art for me is a form of nourishment. I NEED it.”

“Good art keeps you warm.” (quoted while working with ice in a pre-dawn session in Nova Scotia.)

“Art – seeing something you never saw before. It was always there – but you were blind to it before.”

“Total control can be the death of a work”. (I need to remember this one!!!)

“Changes in our lives… Things that cause upheavals and shock – they cause us to make more of our lives than we ever could on our own.”


Goldsworthy has long been an absolute inspirational favorite of mine for a number of years since my brother-in-law Norman introduced me to his work about a decade ago. He has apparently been an inspiration for Norman too (he’s one of the artists I featured a couple of posts back). When we get together he is always building ephemeral art pieces himself. We took pictures of some of them at our last family reunion in Maine a couple of summers ago.


It was foggy for most of the week we were there by the water. It was very cool, and a bit eerie seeing single rocks precariously balanced all across the cliff top, and well as piles of stones braving the tides...

9 comments:

natural attrill said...

I will look out for that dvd, thanks! Have loved his work for years.
Many years ago I used to walk in a local wood and came accross anonymous huge sculptures made mostly from wood, logs and twigs piled ontop of each other in various shapes, one a woman lying on the ground, about 30 foot long. Other smaller pieces would appear a week or so later and you would just stumble accross interesting forms when walking. Apparently it was a young guy making them, wonder what he is up to now!
Penny.

jog said...

I always find a great sense of peace in his constructions--a sense of oneness with what these things were, what they have become under his spell, and what they will be as the sculptures gradually loose their cohesion. It's like a piece of fluid time that you can actually see before your eyes. I think that dvd would be good restorative medicine!

Gina said...

Thank you so much for sharing this with us, I'm going to look it up now!

Daisy Lupin said...

I am a a big fan of Andy Goldsworthy's work, and have been for many years. He has done some of his work near the area in which I live, in particular, his sheepfold work. I never realised that there was a dvd, I have just seen his books. Must check it out.

One Crabapple said...

What a great find tonight - your info on Andy Goldworthy and yes I will find out more about him. Thank you. So beautiful just what I see and read about here.

BTW !

There is a chocolate swap on a neighbor's blog if you want in. I was thinking about the night we exchanged several notes about chocolate and that you might like to do it too.
http://missrobynbme.blogspot.com/

L/S

tlchang said...

Sandy - what a great idea! A chocolate swap! Don't have the time at the moment to put together a creative package, but maybe we can add that in as a SOSF feature.

Penny and Daisy Lupin - how wonderful to be able to see some of his work in person! I'm always excited to see our local sortof equivilent, Dale Chihuly's work displayed in the area. (I feel another tribute post coming on).

Hi Gina and Jo. Jo I'm proud of you for visiting! :-)

Sarah said...

I adore Andy Goldsworthy's work and my eldist son is also very infulenced by him. Have several of his books but didnt know there was a DVD, will have to get it.
Hey TLC have you woven some magic or something, my daily paintings have started to sell, very exciting. xx

Gretel said...

Ah, I saw this reviewed in the papers - apparently it is very 'slow' (so I think I will enjoy it) - I will definitely be buying it after your excellent review, your obviously understood it better than the Times reporter!

Tart said...

Wow, all these Andy Goldsworthy fans out there - wonderful! I've been fortunate to see quite a few of his creations in real life and have some books but no, didn't know about the DVD either and will be out there looking for it now.