Rivers and Tides

I am a huge fan of the documentary film. Recently Ian and I watched one called Rivers and Tides. When it came from Netflix, I read the information and thought that Ian had ordered something about geography. It was actually about Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist and photographer who lives in Scotland, with his wife and young children.

I had a hard time in the beginning of the film because I had a hard time with the nature of his work. My work is permanent. His is impermanent. My record is my work. His record is photography. Before sunrise, he will pour himself painstaking into the creation of a sculpture from ice which he knows will disappear with the heat of the day. It’s hard to dispell the feeling that he wastes his art and time when you see his work dissolve in the tide or melt in daylight.

With ice, stones, twigs and leaves, he assembles absolutely improbable structures. He builds them in tidal basins or in streams, knowing they are temporary, and he invests himself one hundred percent. The environment does to his work what he knew in advance would happen. And then he thinks of another way to do it all over again. I found myself totally engrossed with him and his work. I am his fan, one hundred percent.