Knotweed Stalks

Knotweed Stalks
Andy Goldsworthy (British)
1988

First Impressions:
This is a really cool sculpture. To me it reminds me of a window or a hole. The scene looks really spectacular and the background compliments the sculpture. This sculpure looks like it is sticking into the ground out of the water. When I first looked at it, I thought it was an "impossible" sculpure. I could not seem to figure out hiw Goldsworthy had made it. Then after looking at the discription (my bad) I found out that the bottom part was really the reflection of the stalks above the water. This three-dimensional object truly amazes me as the thought of using the reflection of the water to create symetry was truly brilliant and inspirational. It is also really cool how the whole makes the sculpture look as if it concaves in, towards the hole. The hole draws an incredible amount of attraction (to the eye). I am inspired by this sculpture and the way the Andy Goldsworthy used nature to create such a magnificent masterpiece.

What I Have Learned:
As mentioned above, it is really neat how Andy Goldsworthy used the reflection of the water to "complete" the sculpture. Andy is an artist that uses and "collaborates" with nature to create his creations. He features his art work as "momentary" or "ephemeral"1. He photographs his creations as soon as they are finished. As said by morning-earth.com, "His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can." Andy will use whatever he has (nature wise) to create his amazing and beautiful works of art.

Here are some of his words about his art work:
"I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and "found" tools--a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn. "

"Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there."

"I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue."


"I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and "found" tools--a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn. "

"Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there."

"I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue."

"Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature."

"The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below."

Sources: http://www.morning-earth.org/ARTISTNATURALISTS/AN_Goldsworthy.html
Picture: http://prettisculpture.typepad.com/photos/other_artists_3/goldsworthy2.html