Sunday Reading: Rivers and Tides

 

Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time is the most spiritually literate documentary you will see this year. It won the Golden Gate Award Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival. The DVD includes a gallery of images so you can see again the sculptures that caught your eye; and filmography of German director, cinematographer, and editor Thomas Riedelsheimer; and a brief biography of Andy Goldsworthy which lists his books. This extraordinary documentary will enchant you in many ways with its startling images, its exotic music by Fred Frith, and its ability to stimulate your inner artist, who will likely begin dreaming up creative projects to do with all the materials at hand around your own place.

 

"Art for me is a form of nourishment," Goldsworthy says, and we see what he means as he begins to assemble his earthwork arrangements. Arriving for a new commission in Nova Scotia, he has only a little time to familiarize himself with the seaside terrain. Still, he establishes a camaraderie with the natural world: "I've shook hands with the place," he declares as he begins to work on an icicle sculpture that fits perfectly with the chilly and desolate milieu. Goldsworthy respects the processes of life and death reflected in nature. As the sun illuminates the finished sculpture, he notes, "The very thing that brought it to life, will bring about its death." This is only one of the many spiritual insights emerging from his art

 

 

Goldsworthy is also a practitioner of what Albert Schweitzer called "reverence for life." He salutes the individuality of stones and muses over the memories they carry of the things they have seen and the changes they have experienced. He relishes the particularity of place and the deep resonances that a certain milieu can have with our souls. And last but not least, Goldsworthy is a connoisseur of mystery. He is not frightened of death or the destruction of things. He accepts that everything is ephemeral and subject to the ravages of time. Day by day, he plunges into new marvels and stays with the present moment which is unrepeatable and precious. Just like this extraordinary documentary.