No discussion of trees and tree art is complete without mentioning Wood, a book devoted to the woodland art of English sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. Born in Cheshire in 1956, Goldsworthy was raised in Yorkshire, has settled in Scotland, and makes his site-specific environmental sculptures all over the world, from Japan and the Australian outback to North America and the North Pole. Inspired by the American "Land Art" movement of the 1960s, Goldsworthy creates works of art from wood, stone, leaves, reeds, thorns, water, snow, ice, and other natural materials. Many of these are ephemeral pieces, documented photographically, while others bring the beauty of nature's patterns and shapes into gallery and museum settings.
Arthur Lubow writes in The Smithsonian Magazine: "On a typical day, Andy Goldsworthy can be found in the woods near his home in Penpont, Scotland, maybe cloaking a fallen tree branch with a tapestry of yellow and brown elm leaves, or, in a rainstorm, lying on a rock until the dry outline of his body materializes as a pale shadow on the moist surface. Come winter, he might be soldering icicles into glittering loops or star bursts with his bare fingers. Because he works outdoors with natural materials, Goldsworthy is sometimes portrayed as a modern Druid; really, he is much closer to a latter-day Impressionist. Like those 19th-century painters, he is obsessed with the way sunlight falls and flickers, especially on stone, water, and leaves." (Read the rest of the article here.)
Other books on Goldsworthy's magical art: Stone, Time, Arch, Wall, Passage, Hand to Earth, Midsummer Snowballs, and Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration With Nature. An inspiring film about the artist, Rivers and Tides, is available on DVD. There's a website for Goldsworthy's "Sheepfolds" project in Cumbria; a site for his "Snowballs in Summer" in London; and an interview with Goldsworthy about his "Oak Cairn" sculpture for Scripps Institute. You can view more of his work on the eyestorm site, and read the artist's diary concerning the creation of a piece in Digne, France.
"Nature for me isn't the bit that stops in the national parks," says Goldsworthy. "It's in a city, in a gallery, in a building. It's everywhere we are."
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