Advanced Sculpture, 2014

Project 2: Place
ARTIST RESEARCH

Kristin Seymour
Place: Andy Goldsworthy

            When most people think about famous artwork, white walls are in the background of their mental image. When people think about place as an artistic term they may think about outdoor sculpture gardens and white cube galleries. Most people would not think about site responsive artwork in the way that Andy Goldsworthy does. Although he has created sculptures for the purpose of galleries and sculpture gardens, he often creates his most famous works in areas untraveled by people.
Goldsworthy will travel to remote places, deep into woods, to far away streams and find the perfect spaces for his site responsive sculptures. His sculptures are regularly considered site responsive rather than site specific because he does not go into a space with a previous form in mind. He enters a place and then once the natural resources and environment are assessed he will create a work that emphasizes the land he is working in. In a lecture given at the St. Louis Art Museum Goldsworthy explained how he considers his work to be ephemeral as well as a learning process. His process of working opens his eyes up to the land around him.. Through each work he makes, he begins to understand the place more (St. Louis Art Museum). Goldsworthy uses his raw natural materials and process of creation to explore each space. His explorations are interested in climate changes, weather, time, and natural forces in relation to the physical make up of each space. In his piece: Horse Chestnut leaves… disappeared Loughborough, Leicestershire (1986) Figure 1, Goldsworthy explores the movement of the water currents and other environmental factors through the leaves across the pond of his piece. He stitched together leaves with thorns and used sticks to attach the leaves to the bottom of the pond. Over the week of this pieces existence he watched it interact with its surroundings and eventually decay and dismantle (Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue).

Figure1.  Horse chestnut leaves sections torn out pinned with thorns to sticks pushed into pond bottom muddy black clouds sitrred up around where I worked over the week the leaves began to fall and the pond rose slightly work gradually disappeared Loughborough, Leicestershire 22 September 1986

Goldsworthy explained a more recent set of work during his lecture at the St. Louis Art Museum; based in Southern England at an old estate being turned into a foundation to honor landscape and the arts. He was commissioned to make work on the grounds. He ventured deep in the woods where people must search to find his work. It was a place for the animals he stated and there and he found chalk that had been dug up by badgers. He placed the chalk around the edges of a tree’s roots. This process outlined the roots and showed their form to the viewer Figure 2. He stated in the lectures that this work was far different from his normal works, but commented that “the fact is that is what is there”. This comment shows how Goldsworthy relies only on the raw materials he is presented with in a space and then explores that space through his works. Without working hands on in the space he would not learn about the space in his opinion (St. Louis Art Museum). He continued the idea of showing the paths of a tree’s roots with the first yellow leaves of fall. He lined the yellow leaves at the edges of the roots in turn emphasizing their paths in the landscape Figure 3. He explained in the lecture that this sculpture took two days because he wanted the pale grey English sky (St. Louis Art Museum). The sky made the leaves more colorful for his photographs. This work shows how Goldsworthy explores the space with his own hands and only learns about the space once he has created a work. Without the leaves and chalk outlining the roots, he would not have seen the paths of the roots as well or at all.

Figure 2. Screen shot of his chalk on roots piece from a video of his lecture at St. Louis Art Museum. No title given or found

Figure 3. Screen shot of his leaves on roots piece from a video of his lecture at St. Louis Art Museum. No title given or found

            Goldsworthy is addressing the idea of place responsive artwork in many ways. First of all he is not removing the sculptures from their natural locations and he is using materials found within the space. Although the sculpture is made of natural materials and pairs with nature, its composition and placement creates confusion (Binkly). Through the use of placement and materials Goldsworthy creates confusion, therefore making viewers look at nature in a different way than before. Secondly, Goldsworthy is analyzing the emphasizing the natural processes of nature in his work. He allows through time for the weather, the climate, the seasons and other natural occurrences to not only happen, but to often clarify the true value of each work. In works such as Leaves wrapped around several sticks/Joined, October 12, 1999, Goldsworthy allows the leaves once yellow to age and decay then become brown Figure 4. Goldsworthy is showing viewers the magical side of nature though his work as well as showing the effects of time on nature (Binkly). Of course each specific place will have different effects on his work. In his other works he will emphasize light and the process of time throughout a day. In the winters he will make works with icicles. He will subvert the natural shapes of icicles and send them shooting up into the air. Allowing the sun and heat of the day to melt away his sculptures. Other works will embody the process of tides rising and falling. He will watch and study the tides and then create a work racing against the tide. He often documents these natural processes with photography and this is his mode of presentation.  He takes pride in his work that is dismantles, melted and swept away by natural forces. That is why the photographs of his finished works are so important. The sun rises and falls at different times in different places. The materials found are precisely different due to the place Goldsworthy choses. For these reasons among others, Goldsworthy’s work is very site responsive and embodies place.

Figure 4. Leaves Wrapped around several sticks/Joined October 12, 1999

            In relation to the gallery Goldsworthy will create works that still use natural materials but explore a different social concept. When creating work for a sculpture garden, campus or gallery Goldsworthy takes the opportunity to create very large works that viewers can see, touch, lie on and interact with. This begins to analyze the social nature of a landscape. Once the materials are removed from their source location, the concepts he explores in his site-responsive work go away (Brunton). When he does get to work inside, Goldsworthy hopes to find a way to show nature of the building itself. He explains in an interview with TIME: “Nature is not just trees and fields.” He further explains that the gallery is a neutral space and his works are held in suspension. Also, that even though he needs a team of people to help his create the sculptures, he still needs to get his hands dirty and to construct the pieces himself. The need to touch and make is what “provokes the next work” (Brunton). In Figure 5. You can see how the pieces within the National Gallery of Art are different from those of his intimate outdoor works. The relation to the white walled place changes his work’s form and structure. He creates more permanent structures that allow interaction but also analyze the place it is in. The dome shapes mock the dome shapes of the roofs in Washintgon D.C. (National Gallery of Art).

Figure5. Roof 2005 at the National Gallery of Art

            Andy Goldsworthy embodies the characteristics of a place oriented artist. His sculptures and works focus on the site in which they are created. He uses all raw materials located on site only and creates the works within the space where the materials were found. Light, weather, tides, heat, wind and other forces of nature to most may seem like the source of destruction of a piece, but to Goldsworthy these forces are what finishes the piece as a whole. . He uses the natural processes of each site as a way to illuminate the true beauty of each piece. Even in the work created by commission within the social space of humans, he references natural shapes within the landscape and often uses materials from close by. Goldsworthy only creates work focused around physical place and the natural forces contained within the space.

Works Cited
"Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue: Home." Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue:     Home. Crichton Foundation, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2014.          <http://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/>.
Beyst, Stefan. "Andy Goldsworthy: The Beauty of Creation." Andy Goldsworthy: The    Beauty of Creation. N.p., June 2002. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. <http://d-           sites.net/english/goldsworthy.htm>.
Binkly, Sheri. Intertwined Through Time: Andy Goldsworthy and His Masterpieces.         Nov. 2009.
Brunton, Michael. "Q&A with Andy Goldsworthy." Time. Time Inc., 13 Apr. 2007.        Web. 28 Feb. 2014.             <http://content.time.com/time/printout/0%2C8816%2C1610464%2C00.ht          ml>.
Krug, Don. "Art & Ecology:." Ecological Art Perspectives and Issues:Ecological Design:               Andy Goldsworthy. Green Museum, n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.             <http://greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/goldsworthy.php>.
"National Gallery of Art." Audio and Video. National Gallery of Art, n.d. Web. 1 Mar.      2014. <http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/audio-video.html>.
St. Louis Art Museum. "Andy Goldsworthy Talks about His Life's Work." YouTube.       YouTube, 04 Dec. 2013. Web. 01 Mar. 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7YEZMJatrY>.
Willette, Dr. Jeanne. "" Title="Art History Unstuffed" Art History Unstuffed." Art        History Unstuffed RSS. Art History Unstuffed, 18 May 2012. Web. 25 Feb.          2014. <http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/tag/earth-art-or-           environmental-art-or-land-art/>.

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Kristin Seymour
Artist Research: Place
Maya Lin

            Maya Lin is a sculptor, environmental artist and architect. She is best known for her break out design for the Vietnam memorial in Washington DC. Since then she has focused on site-specific monuments and artworks that either relate to nature and the environment or architecture which also often related to its purpose and environment. She states in many writings and interviews that she has kept her art and architecture separate her whole career and plans to keep it that way. She bases most of her work on environmental factors and natural landscapes, creating work intended for the gallery as well as on site.
            Maya Lin’s site-specific works are not always using the land as a subject but rather the culture surrounding that piece of land as the basis for her work. Her piece Wave Field, 1995 located at the University of Michigan was not based on the parcel of land allotted to her, in but rather influenced by the people within the building next to it, Figure 1. The space of land provided for her was next to an engineering building that focused on aeronautical engineering and water (Plotts). She went inside and talked to the people who inhabited that space and through talking to them and reading through books given to her, she discovered that students were studying the Stokes Wave (Plotts). This is a reoccurring wave that exists in nature. The end result was rolling mounds of earth in a pattern resembling a Stokes Wave. That wave structure directly related to the place in a cultural way rather than a physical way. The waves were tall enough that once a person sat in their hollow, the viewer would become secluded and absorbed by the wave. The viewer would enter the space and enter a whole new world of waves through Lin’s sculpture (Olsen). She went on to create two more site-specific works in this series at other locations. The second part of the series consisted of smaller waves mocking how water moves across sand and the third sculpture was scaled larger than life. With the large size of her sculptures, viewers can become immersed within the landscape and the sculptures began to become the place and the landscape. Much like Wave Field, Lin’s other works revolve around natural sites and incidences. In an interview with Art 21, Lin states: “My sculptures deal with naturally occurring phenomena, and they’re embedded and very closely aligned with geology and landscape and natural earth formations” (Art 21). During the process of one project she will begin to learn about new topics and spark ideas for her next projects. The Wave Field project led Maya Lin to her next works titled Topologies.

Figure 1. The Wave Field, 1995 Shaped earth, 100 x 100 feet, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

            One of her most famous series of works is titled Systematic Landscapes. This series of work revolves around how we as humans interpret landscapes in the day and age of technology. In a documentary filmed for the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle Washington, Lin explains that she uses topologies and schematic representations as a way to translate what is familiar (or not so familiar) outside, into a representation which we can understand, she is essentially “systematizing landscape” (Plotts). In the exhibition shown in the Corcoran Gallery in 2009, it “explores how people perceive and experience the landscape in a time of heightened technological influence and environmental awareness” (Corcoran). She uses advanced scientific tools and resources to map out the topologies of very specific landscapes. She then creates the work using those measurements and data. The final pieces are exact representations usually to scale of the real place. Even though the exhibition is shown in a gallery far from the original subject’s location, the place of origin is referenced and in the title of the piece. Lin does not hide the origin of her sources and will reference the locations to raise environmental awareness. More specifically in her Bodies of Water Series Lin chose three land locked bodies of water that are among the most endangered bodies of water in the world. She chose the Caspian, Black and Res Seas. This “series depicts places that many people, plants, and animals depend on for life. These locations are in danger of becoming hazardous environments because of increased water pollution” (Corcoran). Her purpose is not only to bring awareness of these worldly issues but also relate to the viewers. So even if the viewers have never visited the locations she is depicting, her goal is to have them relate to the place and then change their preconceived notions.
Her sculptures in the Bodies of Water Series, Figure2, are made from layered pieces of plywood. The layers are formed in a way that it follows the schematic landscape of the submerged section of the body of water. With each layer of plywood the sea becomes deeper and the bottom most layer rests on a pedestal so that the sculpture is in the viewers face. These sculptures are true to scale shape. She does not make up the landscape’s physical contours; she uses real data analysis of the underwater landscape. These works reveal the landscapes of the seas that are unseen by humans. In Lin’s opinion “What we don’t see, we pollute”, therefore she shows us the truth so that we can see (Corcoran). She makes the depth and shapes of these bodies of water concrete through the creation of her three-dimensional sculptures.

Figure 2. Caspian Sea (Bodies of Water Series), 2006 Corcoran Art Gallery

           
            Another series within her Systematic Landscapes exhibition at the Corcoran are Pin River-Potomac and Silver Chesapeake, 2009, Figure 3. Maya Lin created these pieces by using real satellite images of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. She placed pins at random intervals in the shape of these bodies of water. She is very clearly referencing two specific places through her sources and her titles. The places are the whole focus of her pieces. This was the fifth and final location for this series of Pin landscapes within the Systematic Landscapes series. “The artist made a work of art that focuses on the particular landscape of each specific location where the exhibition has been shown” (Corcoran). Even though her presentation is not within the source location, they are still works referencing place. In the Corcoran write up about Systematic Landscapes it states that “She brings traditionally outdoor landscapes indoors, where viewers can engage them in an art gallery setting”. Her goal is to engage viewers that are not directly related ot the place in which she is representing. Her goal is to make new people who have no relation to that place, to see her work and then care, and then not pollute or to then be aware of whatever environmental issue she focuses on.

Figure 3. Silver Chesapeake, 2009, Corcoran Art Gallery

            For Maya Lin art referencing place is not always about making art within the source location. Her work references real landscapes and real places while often presenting them within a gallery. The people who visit environmental locations are often already engaged with that space and care about that place, but white walled, gallery visitors may not be aware or relate to the locations she chooses. By bringing her artwork about landscapes into a gallery context and also with a technological representation, she is trying to appeal to those who may not be aware of the environmental issues in todays world.