"Good art keeps you warm." -Andy Goldsworthy
"...I prefer works that are fashioned by the compromises forced upon me by nature, whether it be an incoming tide, the end of a day, thawing snow, shriveling leaves or the deadline of my own lifetime." -Andy Goldsworthy, in Time magazine
Earthworks artist Andy Goldsworthy has been called the Christo of the woodlands. The Scottish artist with the engineering background is a master at framing the world around him in new and inventive ways. But in some ways, he is also the anti-Christo, relying on natural materials near at hand for his transformations of the mundane into the marvelous. Rather than lobby for 10 years to wrap the Reichstag in burlap or to outline an island in pink nylon, Goldsworthy uses a day to painstakingly create an elaborate layored whorl of twigs on a riverbed, only to see the sculpture/structure lifted up and carried away hours later by the rising tide.
It takes a unique talent to do things like fuse icicles into shimmering loops using nothing but your imagination, cold hands and warm breath. But as an earthworks artist, Goldsworthy has it kind of easy. When you live in a quiet Scottish town, as he does, natural materials are abundant. Find a pile of twigs and you're set for the afternooon. Have a yearning to get creative using sheep's wool? Just walk on down the road to your friendly neighborhood sheepfarmer.
What if you're an earthworks artist in Manhattan? Sure, there's Central Park, not to mention nature preserves in the outer boroughs. Even there, though, the forces we contend with when we want to create Goldsworthy's kind of art in Manhattan--the Police, Central Park groundskeepers, the occasional potential mugger, aggressive vagrant or simply obnoxious passerby--are more intrusive than tides, and the consequences can, unlike Goldsworthy's often ephemeral creations, be lasting (say, resulting in an arrest record, injury or long-lasting hit to one's wallet via a fine).
That said, we have our own abundant resources to tap in our great city. Here is one urban earthwork artist's plan to make use of the natural abundance of objects found on New York streets and subways.
Abundant resource No. 1: Those circular metal Metropolitan Museum of Art entrance tags. Over years of visits, of having friends give me their tags and of picking up fallen tags in and around the Met, I have 120 tags in colors ranging from deep red to seafoam green.
The canvas: The grand staircase leading into the Met, of course. But 120 tags don't go as far as you might think, since they're less than an inch in diameter. With no natural fixative at hand to glue a parade of tags in a solid line up and over the steps I simply place the tags, one on each stair, in a stepping pattern--one on the right, then on the left on the step above it, and so on. I follow the color spectrum, with navy tags first, then the greens, the pinks, the oranges, the bronze, and on through the final light yellow tag.
Like Goldsworthy, I start early--my tags are in place by 8:00 am and I've photographed my work for posterity. It is now time to watch the human tides sweep my art away as visitors climb the steps to the museum.
Abundant resource No. 2: Cigarette butts, the urban equivalent of leaves.
The canvas: Central Park's Great Lawn, where the butts will be placed end to end to create a giant spiral, perhaps reminiscent of whirling smoke, or snails, or of curling into a protective fetal ball.
Like Goldsworthy, I am working against time. My foes: Central Park groundskeepers in golf carts, insistent and indignant would-be athletes, and vagrants who appreciate my efforts but appropriate the larger cigarette butts. That, however, is part of the natural decay of the sculpture and thus fitting. It would just be nice if they'd wait until I was done. At 9:00 pm, when a large crowd of rowdy young men assemble around me and the sculpture I decide that an oncoming tide would be far more reassuring than an oncoming wave of hyperactive teenagers and leave the park.
Abundant resource No. 3: Advertising inserts from the New York Times. These, it seems, are a growing resource. With the help of a few of my new homeless friends and one of their large wheeled canvas laundry bins, I quickly acquire a prodigious mound of inserts.
The canvas: Again, Central Park's Great Lawn, but this time the stand of majestic elms that line the lawn. Using water from the pond beneath Belvedere Castle mixed with the backwash left in soda and beer cans found throughout the park, we create a paper mache meduim with which to cover the bottoms of the trees. The liquid left in the cans and bottles is human sap; the inserts are being reunited with the form from whence they came. It is a beautiful thing.
Alas, the Central Park groundskeepers do not see it this way. Nor do the policemen who ask about permits. My helpers have scattered like the wind, so I alone disassemble the work--again completing a cycle of life and death.
It takes a unique talent to do things like fuse icicles into shimmering loops using nothing but your imagination, cold hands and warm breath. But as an earthworks artist, Goldsworthy has it kind of easy. When you live in a quiet Scottish town, as he does, natural materials are abundant. Find a pile of twigs and you're set for the afternooon. Have a yearning to get creative using sheep's wool? Just walk on down the road to your friendly neighborhood sheepfarmer.
What if you're an earthworks artist in Manhattan? Sure, there's Central Park, not to mention nature preserves in the outer boroughs. Even there, though, the forces we contend with when we want to create Goldsworthy's kind of art in Manhattan--the Police, Central Park groundskeepers, the occasional potential mugger, aggressive vagrant or simply obnoxious passerby--are more intrusive than tides, and the consequences can, unlike Goldsworthy's often ephemeral creations, be lasting (say, resulting in an arrest record, injury or long-lasting hit to one's wallet via a fine).
That said, we have our own abundant resources to tap in our great city. Here is one urban earthwork artist's plan to make use of the natural abundance of objects found on New York streets and subways.
Abundant resource No. 1: Those circular metal Metropolitan Museum of Art entrance tags. Over years of visits, of having friends give me their tags and of picking up fallen tags in and around the Met, I have 120 tags in colors ranging from deep red to seafoam green.
The canvas: The grand staircase leading into the Met, of course. But 120 tags don't go as far as you might think, since they're less than an inch in diameter. With no natural fixative at hand to glue a parade of tags in a solid line up and over the steps I simply place the tags, one on each stair, in a stepping pattern--one on the right, then on the left on the step above it, and so on. I follow the color spectrum, with navy tags first, then the greens, the pinks, the oranges, the bronze, and on through the final light yellow tag.
Like Goldsworthy, I start early--my tags are in place by 8:00 am and I've photographed my work for posterity. It is now time to watch the human tides sweep my art away as visitors climb the steps to the museum.
Abundant resource No. 2: Cigarette butts, the urban equivalent of leaves.
The canvas: Central Park's Great Lawn, where the butts will be placed end to end to create a giant spiral, perhaps reminiscent of whirling smoke, or snails, or of curling into a protective fetal ball.
Like Goldsworthy, I am working against time. My foes: Central Park groundskeepers in golf carts, insistent and indignant would-be athletes, and vagrants who appreciate my efforts but appropriate the larger cigarette butts. That, however, is part of the natural decay of the sculpture and thus fitting. It would just be nice if they'd wait until I was done. At 9:00 pm, when a large crowd of rowdy young men assemble around me and the sculpture I decide that an oncoming tide would be far more reassuring than an oncoming wave of hyperactive teenagers and leave the park.
Abundant resource No. 3: Advertising inserts from the New York Times. These, it seems, are a growing resource. With the help of a few of my new homeless friends and one of their large wheeled canvas laundry bins, I quickly acquire a prodigious mound of inserts.
The canvas: Again, Central Park's Great Lawn, but this time the stand of majestic elms that line the lawn. Using water from the pond beneath Belvedere Castle mixed with the backwash left in soda and beer cans found throughout the park, we create a paper mache meduim with which to cover the bottoms of the trees. The liquid left in the cans and bottles is human sap; the inserts are being reunited with the form from whence they came. It is a beautiful thing.
Alas, the Central Park groundskeepers do not see it this way. Nor do the policemen who ask about permits. My helpers have scattered like the wind, so I alone disassemble the work--again completing a cycle of life and death.
Abundant resource No. 4: Abandoned plastic subway Metrocards
The canvas: the Metropolitan Transit Authority river. Yes, there is a river that snakes its way throughout our city. It is the unsung subway track waterway, that narrow tributary nourished by rain and urban fluids on whose banks we stand every morning.
After collecting Metrocards off of the floor and from the tops of the broken card-reading machines, I use gum scraped off the 86th St. & Lexington Avenue subway station floor as a natural fixative and connect these once valuable Metrocards in a chain that I set upon the river. It is reminiscent of leaves wending their way down a river, at least for a brief moment before it snags on a wadded up gum wrapper.
This final artistic effort ends in near-tragedy. One person ventures from the river's edge into the river itself, seemingly driven mad by the beauty of my long daisy chain of Metrocards. The police arrive, confiscate the artwork and myself and introduce me to a new urban environment: a holding cell. I'm sure I'll find stuff here to work with.
The canvas: the Metropolitan Transit Authority river. Yes, there is a river that snakes its way throughout our city. It is the unsung subway track waterway, that narrow tributary nourished by rain and urban fluids on whose banks we stand every morning.
After collecting Metrocards off of the floor and from the tops of the broken card-reading machines, I use gum scraped off the 86th St. & Lexington Avenue subway station floor as a natural fixative and connect these once valuable Metrocards in a chain that I set upon the river. It is reminiscent of leaves wending their way down a river, at least for a brief moment before it snags on a wadded up gum wrapper.
This final artistic effort ends in near-tragedy. One person ventures from the river's edge into the river itself, seemingly driven mad by the beauty of my long daisy chain of Metrocards. The police arrive, confiscate the artwork and myself and introduce me to a new urban environment: a holding cell. I'm sure I'll find stuff here to work with.
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