Botanica Atlanta | Landscape Design, Construction & Maintenance

Image: Oberon’s Grove

A land artist hailing from Britain, Andy Goldsworthy’s work is site-specific sculpture and photography that pulls from the natural environment in which it is set. His work is dynamic, colorful, vivid, and sometimes intended to mislead the viewer’s eyes.

Pinecones, twigs, blades of grass, clay, mud, ice, stones, and even entire trees are just some of the media that Goldsworthy manipulates to create his works. He creates his compositions in British fields, American forests, and coastlines around the world, and he abstains from using manmade aids such as glue or fasteners. As a result, many of his creations only last as long as it takes for a flower to wilt, the tide to rise, or the wind to blow.

Images: Art + Culture and Sam Valentine

My first exposure to his work was through striking photographs of his circular arrangements of colorful leaves and stones, and I was amazed to find that the pieces were composed of only natural elements.Then, a few years ago, while visiting Storm King Art Center, I had the opportunity to see one of Goldsworthy’s more permanent works up close. Nestled in a lush mountain valley in Mountainville, New York, his “Storm King Wall” rises from a field, dives into a placid pond, and then emerges from the other shore.

Images: Green Sky Designs and Leonel Ponce

The wall, over two-thousand feet long, was built from stones and boulders collected on the old valley farmland, and parts of the wall follow the old foundation of a boundary wall that predated the art center. Thewall makes a point to bend to nature’s will, yielding to tree trunks and meandering a wide serpentine path around them. In addition to the fluid line that the wall paints on the landscape, it is also something that should be appreciated at a nose’s length. To build the wall, Goldsworthy collaborated with professional stone masons who skillfully shaped and dry-stacked stones.

Images: Green Sky Designs, Sam Valentine, Daryl Edelstein, and Urban Palimpsest

If you consider yourself an admirer of art or a lover of nature,it is well worth making a trip to Storm King Art Center, which is only an hour north of New York City, or you may be interested in Goldsworthy’s book, which documents the conception and construction of the wall. Disobeying the very nature of rock, Goldsworthy has created a composition of stone that is surprisingly alive and fluid. The wall is a lasting work that will have an enduring impact on your artistic soul.

Author: Sam Valentine, BLA, LEED AP