The evanescence in British artist Andy Goldworthy‘s work is what first caught hold of me. (Click the link for Artsy’s wonderful Goldsworthy pages.) He works with nature to make sculptures of the moment, or perhaps the hour, using all natural elements. Ice, water, leaves, twigs, wind, rain are the easel, palette, paints, and media he sculpts with. It’s as if he’s having a conversation with nature and time, an intense wrestling almost. His work seems to say beauty is all around us but constantly changing, impossible to capture for long. It’s as if he’s trying to notate Nature’s delicate and constant singing.
Rivers and Tides, the splendid documentary on Goldsworthy and his work, actually is part of his work by letting us watch him work with fast disappearing natural elements. He describes his work as capturing something “intangible. It is here and then gone.” And Goldsworthy shows how quickly that intangible Something, a spirit of beauty in nature, arrives and departs. It’s a metaphor for life, of course. It’s about time and the sacredness of being alive.
Watching that documentary moved me to a tribute poem. I often like to write poems about pieces of art, but I think this is my only poem about an artist other than my father. This sonnet originally appeared in Image: Art, Faith, Mystery.
