Person of the Week: Andy Goldsworthy
Feb. 4, 2005 — -- British environmental sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, 48, is the youngest artist ever to receive a commission from Washington's National Gallery of Art. Goldsworthy is known for using natural surroundings in his art.
For his National Gallery sculpture, titled "Roof," Goldsworthy is using 400 tons of slate from Virginia, which he and his assistants are meticulously sawing and chiseling into nine intersecting domes. Each dome is 27 feet in diameter, and the entire creation is being built without cement.
"This sculpture is a wonderful way of making a connection between an inside and the outside, between a city and its origin, between a building and its origin," he said.
Goldsworthy, who started sculpting at 18, has used natural materials in every one of his pieces.
"I work with a variety of materials -- anything I come across outside," he said. "It could be leaves, stone, branches, grass, mud, clay. If it's snowing, it'll be snow. If it's cold, I would work with ice."
Some of Goldsworthy's creations boggle the mind. He usually works alone and far from Washington -- in the middle of a river, the forest floor and even the North Pole.
"A lot of time it is hard won, slowly, leaf by leaf, figuring things out, things not working out, things going wrong, and then suddenly this sense of something may be possible and it emerges," he said, describing his artistic process.
The sculptures are changed in time by the wind, rain and sun. The only permanent record is often a photograph taken right after completion.
"I experience every emotion you possibly can in the making of a sculpture -- from boredom to frustration to deep anger," Goldsworthy said. "The moments that I live for are those moments when I make a sculpture that works and hangs there so beautifully. They are the moments that I strive for -- and they don't happen very often -- but when they do, they make it worthwhile for all the struggle."
Goldsworthy grew up in the English county of Yorkshire. He says the hard work on a farm as a teenager left him more comfortable out of doors than in. He loved the physical nature of work.
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