Assignment 6: Ephemeral Installation

In preparation for this assignment, we watched the film River and Tides, which is about the work of the incredibly eloquent artist Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy creates art by going into nature and moving the materials he finds there into studies natural shapes and forms. His elegant pieces require time and patience to complete, but may last only moments before falling apart.

            I chose a sunny place along an old fencerow in the woods on campus, near the south-west corner of the soccer field, to construct my installation.  The fencerow still has wire field fence and piled stones, and there is a small ravine running to the creek. The spring birds were calling, the weather was fair, garter snakes were coming out of hibernation on the hillside, and little spring beauty flowers were beginning to bloom. Our campus is beautiful, and I love that while there is a triumph of nature where the woods have grown back, there is still evidence of the farms and people’s lives that used to be there. The old fences were built by people once, and every stone is in its place because a person picked it up and moved it there. Moving rocks is an enduring way in which people can reach across great lengths of time. Goldsworthy discussed this in his film. There is a kind of human connection in stones.

            Goldsworthy often makes pieces in which he arranges objects so that their natural differences in color create a perfect circle. I could find very little color in the woods so early in spring, but after looking around for a few minutes I noticed that some of the rocks had bright green moss growing on their surfaces. When I lifted them out of the ground, I found that the moss ended abruptly where the stone had not been exposed to light, creating a contrast in color. I piled stones and arranged them so that the areas of moss formed a circle of green surrounded by the bare surfaces, and I found that it was much more difficult than I had realized. It took me several hours to gather the stones and the circle required trial and error to construct, but I found this process to be very pleasant. There was a meditative calm in spending some time working with my hands, and I enjoyed being alone with my thoughts on such a nice day. It was therapeutic to be free to concentrate on that task.

            My finished piece is a green circle on a background of gray made by arranging stones from the old fencerow, with a smaller circle of red beside it, which was made with some fungus I had found. I was not able to achieve a very strong contrast in the moss circle, and so I think that the effect is subtle and it blends into the environment.

            Demise is always a part of an ephemeral piece. My fungus circle will not last long, but if the stones are not disturbed they may be there long after I am gone. The pattern of moss will not last, however, because now that the stones have been moved their conditions have changed, and moss will die is some places and begin to grow in others. I think that there is a beauty in the aging of ephemeral art, and the eventual loss of the circle is a part of the piece.