Andy Goldsworthy


Andy Goldsworthy was born 26th July 1956. He is a British sculptor as well as a photographer and environmentalist. He is mostly known for his site specific art which is about putting a sculpture into a natural and environmental environment and making it part of the site. He currently lives and works in Scotland.


Rain shadow
St. Abbs, Scotland
June 1984

My first impression of this work was that it was just a print in the ground and a bunch of different clor rocks put around him. At first, I didn't realise that this is actually him laying in the rain for hours waiting for it to stop and leaving the dry ground underneath him when he stood up.

What I can see in this image is a human shaped dry piece of land. The imprint is of Andy Goldsworthy himself. It looks as if it were a shadow left behind the artist, but it's a shadow that will not move until it rains again. The piece itself can be called a sculpture as sclupting can be either making something out of material or cutting away which is what the artist did with rain. He got rid of it in a very smart way.

The work itself puts you into a calm mood. It's very smooth despite it being made on rocks and shows a memory of someone laying in the rain. The idea of him laying in the rain itself gives a powerful feeling as it shows that he experienced the storm on his own skin. One of his quotes say ''A line defines the inside or outside edge of a shape'' This tells is that the artist thinks of the line around him as a barrier between whats inside and whats around him.

He created this mood by experiencing the storm itself. I thinks it's a crazy idea to lie in the middle of a park waiting for a storm to finish. Many others would think of it crazy too and this is why the mood is so powerful because he commited this crazy idea.

I personally like this piece of work as it's very different to any piece of art you see everyday. It's temporary which means it will dissappear eventually and for the artist it's the experience of the storm that makes this piece of art significant.
The hardest part of creating such art is patience. We do not know how long the storm lasted whether it was a couple of minutes of hours. The artist must have been durable and extremely commited to creating such art.
The artist used a very unusual piece of media which was rain. Rarely is nature itself used in art, but Andy Goldworthy work around the nature itself which makes him a very different and original artist.
I think he wanted to say that an experience can be put into art. The experience of him sitting through the storm is a memory in the shape he left being after the storm.

I decided to use this artist in my work not only because the technique he used was original, but the idea of sitting in the rain still and leaving the dry land behind links to my theme of memories and also has some links to other artists such as Hodgkin. Placing a memory in a piece of art.

Links

I think that Andy Goldsworthy is anrtist that links directly to my window installation. He does site-specific art and my window installation is also site-specific because it will be on a big display. The techniques and processes of the artist might not have the biggest link to what I want to do, but I want to combine some of my final work to him as part of the installation.

---------Responces--------

The laptop stand

I used this object because it had a very deep and interesting shape. It resembled a spider web and unlike my other objects, it had a structure that varied from everything else. I placed it on a piece of paper upside down and used chalk and a knife to do the process. I took the knife and sliced it across the chalk which left thick black dust coming off. It worked very well on a white sheet of paper. I made sure that the dust dropped into the holesof the stand as well as the outside to get the outline of the object.
As I removed the bject from it's place, what was left is the dusted chalk. Andy Goldsworthy used the rain as the object to give an outline to his body and I used chalk because I am not prepared to sitin the rain for hours in 1 position. This links to my project of memories because itleaves a mark of something that was once present in an area. In my case,it's an object from my file box.

Toy Soldier

Using the same method as for the lapto stand,I repeated it for one of the toy soldiers in my filebox. I wanted to see of it works for something without any straight edges, but something with a rough form. It would have been better if the soldier was bigger because the dust from the chalk couldn't get the exact shape of the soldier. Another thing I could have tired is creating smaller bits of dust however; it would get blown away too easily or get underneath the soldier whoch would break the form created with the dusted chalk.  










Tiger Toy

I was thinking more of how Andy Goldsworthy did the site art using rain. I took a spray filled with water, placed the tiger in a piece of paper and sprayed the water right on top of it. I tried mixing some ink with the water to make the outline clearer.  


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