The title is best suited to the British artist, Andy Goldsworthy and his association to nature. Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist, who through his art has pushed the boundaries of materiality and time. He aims to embed his work within its context while registering the candid change. His work is an exploration of natural materials like earth, twigs, stone, leaves, water or whatever he may find on his site, and reaction to the same environment. I have refrained myself from picking up a specific project, instead I have tried to discuss the process and the body of work and process as a whole.

Andy quotes his work as, “I want an intimate physical involvement with the earth. I must touch. I take nothing out with me in the way of tools, glue or rope, preferring to explore the natural bonds and tensions that exist within the earth. The season and weather conditions determine to a large extent what I make. I enjoy relying on the seasons to provide new materials.” Andy Goldsworthy work is ephemeral and timeless at the same moment. He explores the incidental details of nature as tool and the inspiration for his work.

Andy’s work is a clear depiction of the gut instinct evoked as a result of tangible experiences with nature. His work is a process which does not aim for the final singular piece, but an abstract expression of phenomenology of nature. I would rather claim his work as the fine line when the embodied material transcends into ethereal moments. He understands the materiality, the process, cycle and scales of nature as thrust him to situate himself and his work in context of place and time. Andy is in constant search of such energies that are co-present within a space/site, which he pronounces through the formal language of his art. His work is transient and ephemeral, and often lasts only a few seconds or days, or may even be eternal. It is highly subjected to the forces of nature. For me his work often puts forward the question of continuity and weathering in both, material and meaning.
The more fugitive the material, the more dynamic is the registration of change. The more enduring the material, the more static is the experience. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible, and his work stays until nature reclaims them. Hence, I am forced to call his works a constant shift between growth, finding, recomposing and decay. This decay of material is not death, but the marking of timeless meaning, which continues to affect material in the same repeated manner. The act of reiteration in his attitude toward his work lies parallel with the temporal qualities of landscape and echoes the timelessness of these natural cycles over and over again, registering the change. Weathering is a tool, is a catalyst for him, which challenged his understating of material and tectonics.

As Andy quotes, “Sometimes a work is at its best when most threatened by the weather. A balanced rock is given enormous tension and force by a wind that might cause its collapse. I have worked with colorful leaves, delicate grasses and feathers made extra vivid by a dark, rain-laden sky that casts no shadow. Had it rained, the work would have become mud-splattered and washed away.”
As a methodical process every time, Andy spends days to observe the phenomenology on his site and material. He works with the same material and place many times, testing different forms, until he achieves absolute coherence between the three. His works are mostly and intuitive representation of such observation. The sense of touch is essential to him as he only works with the found material. The colored leaves are not a color out of tube, but the colors of fall, which he carefully picked and arranged in a geometric form. It is more about displacing them from where they were found and re arranging them in a surprise within the same context. This revelation is often achieved by creating a contrast through the language of arrangement of his material, with the context.

His association with context is a strange juxtaposition of his honest appreciation of phenomenology and materiality of nature within clear geometric boundaries. There is a certain degree of geometric abstraction of nature, which is in contrast with the milieu of the art. The ball, patch, line, arch, spire and hole are some of the recurring forms in this work. For him the hole or the circle is a poetics of the potent energy with the earth, and the black color represents the presence of energy. Here, I would question the act to reiteration as a process to create one art piece to the replication of similar forms. I find it mundane and beyond his ability to challenge new abstractions from nature. All the above forms essential to Andy, are directly within nature, be it a physical or non-physical forms. The Circle to the sun, or the line to the rays, are present in nature. I would accuse Andy to work within the comfort levels he have achieved, and resist moving beyond them. I am not sure of the precise reasons, but maybe it is due to the iconography adhered to his name and capitalism, which most of the artists fall into after initial years of explorations and once they acquire fame.

While studying the processes of nature, he also explores tectonic in different materials, tension and bonding. There is not glue or pins to hold his work together. These tectonics may be of gravity, or material property and form. He understands how a stone is different from a twig. Andy refrains to tectonically marry two materials for a single piece of work, rather it is an additive process of same material and tectonic. Again, I would raise the question of repetition; here the repetition is the tectonic’s relation between the fractals of his construction. He pushes the boundaries to a certain limit that the tectonics can withstand, and then leaves them to the mercy of nature. This makes it highly important for him to record his work through photographs and video which has actually become a mode of display and exhibition for him, leaving the admirers to a virtual experience of his work.

Personally, I feel a high degree of synthetics connected to his work . The temporal qualities of his work are only experienced through digital media. The only way to document and reproduce his work is either through photography or film. This has crippled the strength of the honest connection with the phenomenology and material, contrary replicates as mere animation.

Andy Goldworthy's art is deeply connected with the flow of energy and time, as is seen in the film "Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy". He creates his art with nature and it is destroyed by other forces of nature and time. The art shows that in nature, energy is always conserved and flows from one form to another. Each example uses natural landscape material, placed at a different stage in their individual cycle of growth and decay, to express similar symbolism, yet different meaning, yet connecting them to the larger landscape through time. I would really like to see some of his work which is in an urban setting and responsive of cultural changes as well as the natural phenomenon.