Andy Goldsworthy

Artist

1956-07-26

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor and environmental artist known for site-specific works made from natural materials.

Quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.
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My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.
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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
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I have walked around the same streets so many times, and then seen a place that had been hidden to me. I now know the sites in a way that makes me think I could have made better use of the connections between place and snowball.
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A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels.
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The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.
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A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
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I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.
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As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.
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Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures.
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It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.
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I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones.
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I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.
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The hardened mass of liquid stones had much stronger qualities than those which had simply torn. The skin remained a recognisable part of the molten stone.
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The stones tear like flesh, rather than breaking. Although what happens is violent, it is a violence that is in stone. A tear is more unnerving than a break.
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It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.
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I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.
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I soon realised that what had happened on a small scale cannot necessarily be repeated on a larger scale. The stones were so big that the amount of heat required was prohibitively expensive and wasteful.
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Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.
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