Where does art-making begin and end? Andy Goldsworthy, a 40-year-old British artist who uses nature as a partner, raises this question with his works of amazing art; some of them are temporary, some meant to last. Goldsworthy creates works of extraordinary beauty using natural materials, stones, wood, water, which then disintegrate naturally or are deliberately dismantled. Andy Goldsworthy, a non-traditional sculptor, was born in Cheshire, England in 1956 and raised in Yorkshire. Currently, Goldsworthy resides at Penpont, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. While attending Harrogate High School, as a teenager, photographer and sculptor, he worked as a hired hand on farms outside Leeds, England. It was then that he began to explore the patterns of nature by arranging its building blocks in unexpected ways. These farm experiences provided him with direct encounters and knowledge related to working the land.After high school, Goldsworthy attended Bradford College of Art. Later, at Preston College in Lancaster, England, Goldsworthy took additional courses in fine art and began to develop his own style. Soon, the outdoors became his studio and he discovered he was happier living on a farm than in a college studio. His view of nature opposes altering the land. Goldsworthy says,"I have become aware of how nature is in a state of change and how that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Often I can only follow a train of thought while a particular weather condition persists. When a change comes, the idea must alter or it will, and often does, fail. I am sometimes left stranded by a change in the weather with half-understood feelings that have to travel with me until conditions are right for them to reappear.During one persistently cold period that I have had to work with in Britain, I was able to pursue ideas only hinted at in previous winters. It is difficult to pred...
