Quote

When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf or the stone, it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.

Andy Goldsworthy

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Andy Goldsworthy
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: July 25
Artist
Environmental Artist
Environmentalist
Land Artist
Photographer
Sculptor
County Palatine of Chester
Andi Gōruzuwājī
Andrew Goldsworthy
Working
Stone
Understand
Object
Process
Stones
Nature
Materials
Leafs
Whole
Objects
Important
Behinds
Leaf
Trying
Behind
Processes
Single
Isolated

More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

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Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I take the opportunity each day offers.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Stones are checked every so often to see if any have split or at worst exploded. An explosion can leave debris in the elements so the firing has to be abandoned.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It's just that when I work on someone else's land, it makes me aware of the social nature of that landscape.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I knew the tree when it grew, and the tree is now gone. The farmers cut it up, and it's become firewood. And there's this tremendous sense of absence and shock and violence attendant to that collapsing tree.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Design implies a sense of mapping something out and then you follow the plan.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The relationship between the public and the artist is complex and difficult to explain. There is a fine line between using this critical energy creatively and pandering to it.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Understanding the materials I work with... gives me a deeper understanding of my place. And it's helped me make sense of the changes that are happening to me as I grow older.
Andy Goldsworthy
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People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realization. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.
Andy Goldsworthy
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My work comes first, reasons for it follow.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The main source of my income is through the commissions of the large-scale works and big sculptures, the projects.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I just see myself as an object in the final image. I know I'm experiencing it when I'm there working on it. I'm there to be worked with, as anything else that I work with.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I've laid down in dried up streambeds, leaving a shadow. And then, five minutes later, it's flash flooded, and where I once laid is now running water, which would've washed me away, you know? There's that power and danger often in places that look so calm and pastoral to begin with.
Andy Goldsworthy
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If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones.
Andy Goldsworthy
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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.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy. Not just because of the materials inside them, but in the way that they appear caged, captured.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.
Andy Goldsworthy