Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels.
A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
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.
As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.
Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.
Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.
Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.
I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.
I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones.
I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.
I have walked around the same streets so many times, and then seen a place that had been hidden to me. I now know the sites in a way that makes me think I could have made better use of the connections between place and snowball.
I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.
I soon realised that what had happened on a small scale cannot necessarily be repeated on a larger scale. The stones were so big that the amount of heat required was prohibitively expensive and wasteful.
I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.
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 realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.
It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.
It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.
My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.
Not being able to touch is sometimes as interesting as being able to touch.
Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer.
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AuthorName
Andy Goldsworthy
Profession
Artist
BirthDate
26 July, 1956
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