Creativity from Without

Artists and designers have a wide range of medias to choose from for their projects. They can use paint, pencil, charcoal, light, or even nature. For the famed British artist Andy Goldsworthy, he specializes in ephemeral art, utilizing leaves, rain, twigs, ice and other natural objects to create stunning visuals for his audiences.

Having traveled to different parts of the world, Goldsworthy has experimented with numerous elements of nature. In places that snowed, he would find icicles and manipulate their rigid features to create awe-worthy sculptures, such as the ice spiral wrapped around a tree trunk and the icicle star joined by saliva pictured below.  

In forests, Goldsworthy would take advantage of the leaves in the area to form circles of color that are simple in form but are simply mesmerizing.

Other times, he would use objects such as goose feathers and pebbles. In the case of the goose feathers, Goldsworthy bent the feathers into arches and curves, orienting and overlapping them into a whimsical design of white that stands out from the dark color of the dirt. As for the pebbles, he gathered different sized but similarly textured stones, cleanly split and scratched them along the cracks, and laid them in the shape of a swirl on the sandy floor, alluding to the swirls on various sea shells. The white marks made by the scratches and the shadows cast between the cracks in the pebbles make Goldsworthy’s design pop out from the background, highlighting its unique features.

Certainly, Goldsworthy is an artist who draws inspiration from his surroundings, harboring a “creativity from without.” To express his reasons for using such a method, he stated, “I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and "found" tools--a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.”

Here at UC Davis is where we can learn too, inside and outside of Design class. As long as we keep our eyes and minds open, we will eventually find our inspiration around us, just like how Andy Goldsworthy found inspiration in nature.

*Photos and quote taken from Morning Earth and Cherry Coloured