Art Towards a Symbiotic Future: Reimagining the Human/Nature Relationship through Andy Goldsworthy’s Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes)
Raina Hatcher
May 2, 2025
Abstract:
This thesis will argue for the use of art in the era of climate change as a means of investigating and reimagining the human relationship with nature by considering Andy Goldsworthy’s Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes) (2007), a three-part permanent earthwork installed at Glenstone in Potomac, MD. (figs. 4, 5, 6) The iconographic content of each house—the sphere, the void, and concentric holes respectively—will be connected to different aspects of the human relationship with nature—its location, duration, and interactivity—to reveal how our understanding of humanity and nature must change if we are to achieve a lasting, sustainable relationship. To deepen this analysis, the ecological effect of Clay Houses will also be compared to that of a few of Goldsworthy’s photographed ephemeral earthworks that utilize similar forms.
Introduction
For most of my childhood and all of my adolescence, from before I began kindergarten until after I became an adult, I lived in one room—a room that changed and grew as I changed and grew. Designed and redesigned as what I was and what I wanted to be surrounded by changed. Still, some aspects of my surroundings were beyond the reach of my changing hands. The room always had four walls, two windows, and a roof above its ceiling… Thump. Pow! BAM! Every year, in every season but winter, the roof was pounded by walnut husks. Outside, less than ten feet away from the outer corner of the room, was a walnut tree. (figs. 1, 2)
Figures 1 & 2: Photographs of the walnut tree—and my room with the light on. (photo: Raina Hatcher)
Its limbs stretched beyond the edge of the room’s outer walls and over the roof. Its roots, deep and wide-spreading, likely reached below the foundation of the house. The room, with me inside of it, was surrounded. The walnut tree must have grown and changed like me, it was alive, but it was so much older and larger than I was that its changes were mostly imperceptible to me. We grew on different timescales, so I could only experience its seasonal changes. In the winter, outside of each window, I could see the sky and the twisting limbs and branches of the tree. In the spring and summer, I could see only green. When directly illuminated by the sun the leaves glowed a light bright green, camouflaging its suspensefully hung walnut husks. Not due to be fully mature until fall, in the warmer months most of these bright green husks still clung to the tree. But, sporadically, a few would drop. Clunk. This rarity made every instance startling. As soon as I had forgotten the sound, Thump. I was shocked into remembering where I was, into awareness of my surroundings. On the hottest of summer days, I would hide in the room to escape the heat, the reality of my environment, and nature would go on knocking—letting me know that I could never truly hide. I could not escape what I had never left, what was all around me, what was inside of me, what I was. Knock knock.
What does it mean to live with nature? To participate in the complex web of relationships that forms an ecosystem? In the era of climate change, asking ourselves these questions has become vital. Inside the rooms we build, where we control the temperature, humidity, inflow of what we want and outflow of what we don’t, it is easy to forget that what is inside and what is outside are always in contact, that they are interacting. THUMP.
Artists around the world are drawing attention to the hard facts and human realities of climate breakdown—melting polar ice caps, raging forest fires, acidic rain, and the human beings who will lose or already are losing their food sources, their homes, and their lives. And, crucially, artists are also imagining and thereby contributing to the creation of potential worlds and ways of living where humanity exists sustainably, as part of nature. (1) Whether focusing on current realities or potential futures, these artists are investigating how we imagine nature. By engaging with their art, we can increase the scope and change the trajectory of our imagination—but this engagement is critical. To influence the human populace, our collective consciousness, an artist’s work needs to be seen and interacted with by the human populace. Thus, this essay focuses on one of the most famous environmental artists alive today: Andy Goldsworthy.
Andy Goldsworthy’s artwork has made it directly into our homes through what the Art World often calls ‘coffee table’ books—a moniker meant as a slight insult, but which really just illustrates their accessibility to the public. In this highly visible position, Andy Goldsworthy is already shaping how we view nature, and is particularly capable of changing that shape. In his bestselling ‘coffee table’ book, Andy Goldsworthy: a Collaboration with Nature, 1990, Goldsworthy fills the pages with photographs of beautiful ephemeral earthworks. To create and capture these ephemera, Goldsworthy woke before dawn and collected materials on-site to create an artwork that lasts a day or less: deconstructed in the coming hours by wind, rising tides, or sunheat. In one earthwork, Early morning calm/knotweed stalks/pushed into lake bottom/made complete by their own reflections, 1988, (fig. 3) Goldsworthy used knotweed stalks to construct half of a circle directly above the surface of a lake, which is reflected by the still water to form a complete circle. The long, straight stalks are attached together with thorns, placed both tangential and normal to the circumference of the inner circle, to support the work as it radiates outwards and becomes increasingly sparse—up to the edge of collapse. Soon after the artwork was photographed, its precarious structure did collapse.
Figure 3: Early morning calm/knotweed stalks/pushed into lake bottom/made complete by their own reflections, 1988. (photo: Andy Goldsworthy)
Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956, and spent most of his childhood residing in the Alwoodley suburbs, five miles from the center of Leeds, England. On one side of his family's estate were fields, and on the other side was a built-up area. Goldsworthy thus became aware of the differences and connections between the countryside and the city at a young age. He recalls: “[a]s a child I got angry when I saw woods I had played in being bulldozed, but then realised that the same thing had happened to clear the area where our house had been built.” He explains, it is “[d]ifficult to be judgemental about a process you are part of. It made me more aware of what lies below the surface in towns and cities.” (2)
Although Andy Goldsworthy is best known for his highly ephemeral earthworks, predominantly those created in stereotypically ‘natural’ environments and depicted through photographs, such as the works complied in Andy Goldsworthy: a Collaboration with Nature, his oeuvre consists of earthworks with various durations and locations, all changing over time with rates that range from seconds to years, in environments both ‘natural’ and cement, isolated from and filled with humans, as well as everywhere in between. To enhance the connections among works in his diverse oeuvre, Goldsworthy uses a set of natural forms, which he repeats in all environments and materials, connecting these environments and materials together. Boulders are made of leaves, ice, and clay, and are located in forests, deserts, and city centers. Other natural forms such as holes, concentric circles, and serpentine forms recur similarly. In a particular location, Goldsworthy will often create multiple forms under the same conditions to connect those forms even more deeply.
To better understand the general representation of nature, and analyze the potential futures these representations create, we must look to Andy Goldsworthy.Although Goldsworthy’s oeuvre in its entirety is reasonably balanced between different representations of humanity and nature—ephemeral and permanent collaborations in various locations—the popularity of his artwork is not. His ephemeral works in stereotypically natural environments are by far the most well known, representing an imbalance in our own ecological thinking and preferences. To rectify this imbalance, this essay will argue for the use of art in the era of climate change as a means of investigating and reimagining the human relationship with nature, by considering Andy Goldsworthy’s Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes) (2007), a three-part permanent earthwork installed at Glenstone in Potomac, MD. (figs. 4, 5, 6) The iconographic content of each house—the sphere, the void, and concentric holes respectively—will be connected to different aspects of the human relationship with nature—its location, duration, and interactivity—to reveal how our understanding of humanity and of nature must change if we are to achieve a lasting, sustainable relationship. To deepen this analysis, the ecological effect of Clay Houses will also be compared to that of a few of Goldsworthy’s photographed ephemeral earthworks that utilize similar forms.
Figures 4, 5, & 6: Andy Goldsworthy, Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes), 2007. (photos: Glenstone, Raina Hatcher, Glenstone)
There is a selection of great scholarship that considers Andy Goldsworthy’s permanent work, such as Hand to Earth: Andy Goldsworthy Sculpture, 1976-1990, a catalog published in 1990 to accompany an early traveling retrospective of Goldsworthy’s work that features both his ephemeral work in photographs, as well as lesser known permanent sculptures and large-scale drawings of site-specific monumental sculptural projects. (3) There is also the more recent volume The Andy Goldsworthy Project, 2010, a substantial scholarly overview of Goldsworthy’s permanent work released to accompany the installation of Roof, a permanent sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. It notably includes the first (and to date only) fully illustrated catalogue documenting Goldsworthy’s permanent commissioned installations —featuring over 120 works dating from 1984 to 2008. (4) Still, by far the majority of literature on Goldsworthy has focused on his better known ephemeral works and their related photographs. There is also in general less scholarly research on Andy Goldsworthy than one would expect, since the artist has released numerous catalogs of his own work, such as Stone, Wood, Arch, Time, and more, all accompanied by his own writing and excerpts from his journal entries instead of outsourced scholarly essays. (5) This catalog format is certainly valuable, both for the deep insight it provides into the artist’s intentions, and for its general public accessibility, but it also means that the available scholarly research on Goldsworthy is somewhat lacking. His earliest permanent works, such as Seven Spires, 1984, and his largest works, such as Storm King Wall, 1997–98, have received considerable attention and research, but many of his smaller and more recent permanent works have yet to receive serious analysis, such as Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes), 2007. At the time of writing, the only publicly available literature on Clay Houses is its catalog entry in The Andy Goldsworthy Project. (6) This entry includes a physical overview of the earthwork: its location, dimensions, materials, and a list of Goldsworthy’s collaborators. It also includes a short statement which describes how Clay Houses was first conceptualized and proposed by Goldsworthy, its building process, and a brief analysis of the meaning of the work—concluding that through its use of forms and materials, Clay Houses:
presents in raw form an architecture that is ‘mortal’—not in the sense of overtly fragile, but of living and breathing. Each resulting clay work has demonstrably cracked, two have developed a distinctive patina, and all three remain responsive to the climate and conditions. Furthermore, with the addition of human hair the clay as a material contains DNA, and its processing bears evidence of human working. Thus, it speaks very directly of us as connected with the earth. (7)
This thesis will expand upon the analysis that Clay Houses showcases our connection to the earth, to understand in greater detail what this connection means and how we nurture it in the era of climate change.
Since Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes) is a site-specific artwork—which means the artwork cannot be separated from its location—it is important to first develop an understanding of the surrounding space. Clay Houses was commissioned by Glenstone—a private art museum in Potomac, Maryland—in 2007. Across nearly 300 acres, Glenstone cultivates a landscape filled with meadows, streams, and forests, in addition to their outdoor sculptures connected by carefully placed paths for visitors. As part of their large-scale reforestation efforts, Glenstone has planted over 7000 trees as well as thousands of shrubs and other understory vegetation in the past decade. Striving for sustainability, their diverse grounds consist mainly of restored-land, and they introduce only regionally appropriate native species that will produce food and habitat for local fauna into their environment. (8) To maintain their delicate efforts, they also ask that visitors remain on the paths.
Clay Houses is situated deep within their woodlands and can be approached either directly by a long and winding staircase or indirectly by the Woodland Trail—a gravel path which traverses the surrounding woods. The three houses were built into the side of a hill, and are located far enough away from any other installations that their associated environment is exclusively the surrounding woods and a small creek. Clay Houses itself is also spread out, so at the site of each house the rest of Clay Houses is only barely visible. In sympathy with this woodland setting, the exterior of the three houses references vernacular architecture, and the back wall of each house is subsumed by the rising hill. (9) (figs. 7, 8) From their exterior, the houses are almost indistinguishable, and the same materials were used to construct each house. Their walls were built of Potomac blue stone, a regional quartz extracted from Carderock quarry down the road, and almost all other materials were also locally sourced: slate for the roofs came from a quarry in Virginia, and oak wood for the ceiling and door came from Pennsylvania. (10)
Figures 7 & 8: Exterior view of Clay Houses. (photos: Raina Hatcher)
Each house contains one small room with clay components excavated from the bed of the nearby stream. To bind this clay, Goldsworthy used a mixture of human hair and sheep’s wool. (11) Beyond their shared source of clay, inside of each room the earthwork begins to deviate. Boulder has four stone walls, a light-toned wooden roof, and a floor covered in reddish-brown dirt. In the center of the room, a large clay boulder occupies the space. Inside the next house, Holes, the back wall is instead covered in layers of clay, forming a series of concentric holes that recede into the hillside. And in the final house, Room, the four walls, the roof, and the floor are all completely covered in cracked clay. Andy Goldsworthy created Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes) as one earthwork, and it will be considered as such, but first it is worthwhile to focus on each house separately to better understand the aspects each house emphasizes of the human relationship with nature.
Boulder - Location
Andy Goldsworthy explores the ideas of location and place most prominently in Boulder. (figs. 9, 10) In the center of the room, a large globe-shaped clay boulder, about six feet in diameter, occupies the space. Stepping down the stone steps that lead into the room, viewers are immediately confronted by this central boulder, and the physical constraints of the rest of the room. To enter any further, viewers must maneuver carefully, paying attention to the position of their body as they walk around the boulder’s circumference. In any given position, there is no more than a few feet between the boulder and the stone walls. The boulder is covered in deep cracks, creating cells of dry clay about a few inches to a foot wide. Looking inside each crack reveals the thin strands of hair that hold the clay together, making this otherwise massive, sturdy boulder appear fragile. (12) As a result, although it is much larger than me, I feel I could break it, and that I must move carefully not to. Maneuvering Boulder thus prompts reflection on location and place in general: our place on this earth, and how that place is shared with earth's other inhabitants. Only so many forms can fit within this shelter.
Figures 9 & 10: Clay Houses (Boulder), with detail view. (photos: Raina Hatcher)
This awareness of place is further developed by the notably spherical form of the central boulder. Boulders, as a category, are generally defined to be “any large rock worn smooth and round by weather and water.” (13) Although boulders are round, Andy Goldsworthy’s Boulder is significantly rounder than naturally occurring boulders, and the source of its roundness is not weathering or water (i.e. forces of nature) but human hands. (14) Boulder’s roundness surpasses what could be expected of any naturally occurring boulder of its size, and thus recalls the more spherical forms of smaller natural objects (eggs, seeds, water droplets, grains of sand) and the largest ‘natural objects’—planets, stars, and black holes. This leads to a distortion of scale—Boulder is both too large, and too small, to naturally exist. Embracing this distortion of scale, Boulder, a globe of ‘earth’, (15) becomes most prominently an analog for the Earth. Walking around Boulder, viewers are not just walking around the circumference of a boulder, but of the entire Earth. Somehow, we stand on the ground, on the Earth, whilst looking at its entirety.
As a specifically human-constructed spheroid, Boulder also references the longstanding pervasiveness of the sphere in human constructions of the universe, a pervasiveness undoubtedly caused by the ubiquitous presence of spherical objects at the cosmological scale. In 1670, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote that “[n]ature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (16) Similar spherical depictions of the universe can be found throughout human history. In Plato’s Timaeus (c. 360 BCE) Timaeus and Socrates discuss the creation of the cosmos, and Timaeus offers the possibility of a demiurge, or divine craftsman, (dēmiourgos) that built it. According to Timaeus, since the dēmiourgos needed a model to work from, and was himself beautiful and intelligent, he decided his creation should resemble himself as much as possible. As a result, “to create the cosmic body, the demiurge drew upon four elements—fire, air, earth and water—in equal proportion; and basing his work on a model, he created a body whole and perfect, one in number, free of old age and disease, and spherical in shape.” (17) Contextualized by these historical representations of the sphere, the particularly spherical form of Andy Goldsworthy’s Boulder recalls singularity, perfection, and wholeness. According to humans, the shape of the entire cosmos is a sphere, and so a sphere is—and includes—everything. Thus, by creating a shelter for Boulder, Goldsworthy creates a shelter for everything, and yet, stepping into this room we struggle to fit. Standing next to this embodiment of wholeness, of the earth and everything on the earth, it becomes clear that the issue is not where it is located and the space it inhabits—but where we are. Only so many forms can fit within this shelter, but only if each new visitor is viewed as a new separate form. Everything and everyone can fit if we view humanity, ourselves, as part of this whole. Our location, the earth, is shared with the rest of nature. So, to make room for everything we must learn to view ourselves as part of nature. We need to become aware of where we are, of what and who else is here. We need to pay attention to the space we take up, and how that space can be shared with all the other organisms who inhabit the Earth, who share our home.
Where is the human relationship with nature located? What does the location of our collaboration currently look like? These questions are well probed by considering Goldsworthy’s most popular earthworks, i.e. those that align best with current sentiment—ephemeral earthworks made in stereotypically ‘natural’ environments.In one of his early spherical earthworks, in the spring of 1981 in Ilkley, Yorkshire, Goldsworthy collected a small patch of snow from a late snowfall into a ball, and brought it to a far away green and flowering wooded area. (fig. 11) Goldsworthy chose to create and dislocate this snowball to see how the juxtaposition between the earthwork and its environment might draw attention to the nature and quality of the material, and how it differs from its surroundings. (18) Within this context, Goldsworthy prompts consideration of place by making the earthwork feel unexpected or impossible in relation to its surrounding environment. The snowball feels out of place in this green environment, it feels magical and unbelievable that a snowball this large, or any snow at all, could be present in this place. The photographic nature of the artwork adds to this miraculous quality. Unlike Goldsworthy, the viewer has not experienced the creation of the work, and so the real circumstances of its existence remain mystifying, unreal, and ungrounded in reality. Viewing just the photograph—with its stark visual contrast, lack of physical context, and reduced dimensionality—the collaboration between humanity and nature becomes peculiar and unstandard, a spectacle in this otherwise stereotypically natural green environment.
Figure 11: Andy Goldsworthy, Snowball, Middleton Woods, Yorkshire, 29 April 1981. (Photo: Andy Goldsworthy)
Witnessing human collaboration with nature in this stereotypical setting only through its photograph can reaffirm unsustainable beliefs about the location of nature, of humanity, and where those regions cross. Nature, a green and wooded place, must be located somewhere far away, somewhere that you are not, since you only witness its photograph. Further, when the hand of humanity touches a place where nature is, it is fundamentally different from that place. Our presence comes from somewhere else, and defies nature.
Would this message be different if we could witness the work in person, if we experienced more than just its photograph? I can only speculate, but at least one person other than Goldsworthy saw the work in person—so what was their experience? In a diary entry from April 29th, 1981, Goldsworthy explains how, while too far away to interfere, he witnessed a man kick the snowball into a stream:
Saw last bit of snow
From flat window on Middleton side.
Collected snow
Made ball
Carried into wood
Heavy long way
Dripping wet.
Went back to see how it was getting on
Mainly to see it melt to nothing
As I was leaving a man came
I hurried across
Got there just in time to see him kick it in stream.
Hurt.
Didn't say anything
Outside I forfeit the right of possession. (19)
At least for this man, who experienced the earthwork tangibly, physically in the same location without the sense of dislocation and separation that a photograph creates, the earthwork was too disruptive, less a curiosity and more a confrontation. Judith Collins, a former curator at Tate and well-renowned authority on sculpture, postulates that “Perhaps the fact that the snowball was out of place, that it should not have been there, which was one of the reasons for creating the work, was also the reason for its destruction.” (20) The kicker acted in response to his current understanding of nature: this thing clearly made by humans is not meant to be here, so get rid of it. Or perhaps, this place is pristine and must be preserved, but this human-made object is not—so why not kick it. Even though Goldsworthy accepted the earthwork’s fate, believing that it was not his to control, he was still taken aback by the actions of the man. The earthwork was destined to disappear anyway, to quickly melt, but the man had chosen to actively remove humanity from nature, and to do so as quickly as possible. In both its effect photographically and how it was treated visually, it is clear that this understanding of nature does not welcome human impact.
The unsustainability of viewing nature, or ‘wilderness,’ as idyllic and human-free is well illustrated by William Cronan in the influential essay “The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” (1995) It is important to note that ‘wilderness’ is not the same as nature. Defined by American culture, ‘wilderness’ privileges some parts of nature at the expense of others: treating supposedly untouched lands as more important and more natural than rehabilitated or hybrid environments like the grounds of Glenstone. Often in artistic mediums, and culture at large, nature and ‘wilderness’ are synonymous, and depicted as completely devoid of human presence. This results in an existential paradox between humanity and nature. “If the human is entirely outside the natural. If we believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. The place where we are is the place where nature is not. If this is so—if by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings … there is no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us.” (21) If we refuse to share space, to let humanity and nature cross the boundary we have created between them, it could be our downfall. Goldsworthy’s temporary earthworks do quite literally cross this divide by putting human creation, and thus presence, in nature, but the result looks so out of place that it effectively enhances the notion that humanity and nature exist in opposition. If we continue to represent nature and humanity as opposites, we “leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.”
Holes - Duration
Andy Goldsworthy continues considering how a lasting, sustainable relationship between humanity and nature can be formed through the rest of Clay Houses, focusing particularly on the ideas of time and durability in Holes. As in Boulder, inside Holes the floor is covered in reddish-brown dirt, the ceiling is constructed of light-toned oak planks, and three of the interior walls are built of potomac bluestone. But unlike Boulder, the focal point of Holes is its back wall. (figs. 12, 13) The entire wall is covered in cracked brown clay, and in the middle of the wall a set of nine concentric holes appear to recede through the wall into the hillside behind it. The edge of each hole is lined with deep cracks that point towards the center of the concentric holes, often completely splitting that hole’s layer of clay. The largest hole is about four feet wide, and each new hole is a few inches smaller and deeper receded than the last. The structure resolves with a final hole only a few inches wide that resides about four feet back from the inner wall’s surface.
Figures 12 & 13: Clay Houses (Holes) (photos: Raina Hatcher)
Through this recession, the identification of where Holes ends and the environment begins becomes obscured. Whether or not it is the case physically, (22) the earthwork visually suggests that its structural integrity relies on the prolonged stability and mutual support of both environmental factors, like the status of the hill, and the efforts of mankind—which create and maintain its four walls. Human creation and earth both appear to hold the roof up, keep the structure together, and maintain its durability. As Holes recedes into the hillside to form the fourth wall, a symbiotic relationship seems to develop between the two influences: mankind and nature.
Not only does Holes appear to become symbiotic with the surrounding environment through its recession into it, the form of Holes itself is universally recurrent—throughout the fundamental components of the universe, through nature, and even human creations—allowing an even greater symbiosis to develop through the creation and referencing of this universal, temporal form. Concentric holes, or their two-dimensional counterpart, concentric circles, are seen in tree rings, water ripples, and in general the propagation of matter over time. (23) Throughout human history, concentric circles have been used to symbolize temporal ideas like movement, cyclicality, infinity, and perpetuity. (24) Historically, the majority of devices that measure time have been circular, such as the sundial and astronomical clock, and the passage of time has been visualized by the repetition of circles concentrically. (25) This motif occurs throughout literature, such as in Virginia Woolf’s classic novel Mrs. Dalloway, where each time Big Ben strikes, Woolf remarks: “The leaden circles dissolved in the air.” (26) It occurs even earlier in the 1841 essay “Circles,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist and transcendentalist, when he writes that:
The life of a man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. (27)
Reminiscent of tree rings, the growth of life and the passage of time is visually manifested by the development of concentric circles. This iconographic characterization of life and time is useful to consider in connection to Holes, and is perhaps best explored through their natural manifestation in tree rings. When viewed face on, Holes particularly resembles tree rings. Darkened by shadow, the circular edge of each hole mimics the natural concentric circles of a tree cross section, with alternating light and dark rings. (28)
The artist Bryan Nash Gill has explored the characteristics of tree rings more so than perhaps any other artist, so to better understand their form visually and temporally we look to his work. In the Woodcut series, Nash Gill used the cross sections of tree trunks to create relief prints that reveal the unique patterns and irregularities of their rings. Printed in 2003, his first ever relief print was of a large Ash tree, with a cross section about four feet wide, the same as Holes. (fig. 14)Tracing the black and white ring pairs, each of which represents a year, Ash showcases 82 years of growth through its dense rings. (29) Radiating outwards, these concentric rings visualize time—the passage of time and the growth of a living thing—on a static surface. They are rings of time, memory embedded in material.
Figure 14: Bryan Nash Gill, Ash, 2003. (photo: Bryan Nash Gill)
In a later work, Heartwood, 2007, Nash Gill printed only the center, or the heartwood of the Ash block. (fig. 15) In its description, Nash Gill explains that “The heartwood is the central, nonliving part of the trunk with the densest and hardest wood … the annual rings radiate from the tree’s first year at the center to the edges of the paper.” (30) The heartwood is the beginning of the tree, but it is now dead wood. It is both birth and death.
Figure 15: Bryan Nash Gill, Heartwood, 2004. (photo: Bryan Nash Gill)
Looking at one set of concentric tree rings and charting their temporality, it may at first seem clear where the beginning and end of ‘time’ occur, or are located. Since the center is the oldest part of the tree, ‘time’ must move outwards and new growth must occur at the edge of the tree—its outermost ring. But, when considering a tree cross section with two centers, this flow of time becomes less simple. In Locust, 2009, (fig. 16) there are two centers—one with loose radiating rings and another with thin dense rings. In its description, Nash Gill explains that Locust “showcases the distinct separation of heartwood from sapwood (the softer, productive layers of wood), as well as the beginning of branching…” (31) It is not two trees merged together, it is one tree beginning to branch. The new branch creates a new center, confusing the linearity of time. The dual role of the center as both heartwood and branch, newly born and dead, adds another layer of complexity to its representation of beginning and end. The center could be both the oldest part of the tree or the newest part of the tree—it is its past and its future.
Figure 16: Bryan Nash Gill, Locust, 2009. (photo: Bryan Nash Gill)
This past/future dualism is useful context when considering Andy Goldsworthy’s fascination with concentric circles, or more aptly, holes. Although Goldsworthy does use the concentric circles form, he more often uses the three-dimensional equivalent of this form: concentric holes. Looking again at Holes, Goldsworthy recalls the past/future dualism of the center of concentric circles, using three-dimensionality to further deepen their connection. Looking into these clay holes is not to look at them but really into them, into their depths, into their history over time. At the center is the beginning, the heartwood, the past, or it could be a new beginning, a new branch, the future. Peering into these narrowing holes, the viewer attempts to both look into and learn about the future and to consider the past at once.
As we confront both rapid ecological change in the present, and the lasting future impact of harmful substances we have put into the environment—the quasi-immortality of plastic and the millennium-long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere—it has become clear that the way we think about time must be reevaluated. In the third chapter of Timescales: Thinking Across Ecological Temporalities, “Deep Time and Landscape History: How Can Historical Particularity Be Translated?” Ömür Harmanşah remarks that in response to climate change, historians urge us “to reconsider historical fundamentals such as the nature/culture divide, prioritization of human over geological time, questions of freedom and agency, and the idea of a shared future for humanity.” Harmanşah attempts to undergo this reconsideration, explaining that:
[T]he Anthropocene invites us to rethink the status of the human among other species, nonhuman beings, and ecologies, while it challenges the temporal sovereignty of “human time.” The problem of deep time in the Anthropocene and the difficulty of translating historical particularity to an expanded view of the past, the present, and the future requires perhaps a new cosmology, new narratives of entangled histories (composed of human and nonhuman actors), and a new ontology of time that is not restricted to linear chronologies of human experience. (32)
Could Holes be part of this new cosmology? Its physical structure blurs the line between humanity and nature, and its iconography prompts us to look towards both the past and the future. Still, It is worth considering the temporality of the earthwork itself.
To sustainably engage with nature and join this new cosmology, how durable should an earthwork be? This question is best answered by first considering the durability of Goldsworthy’s most popular earthworks—or in other words, their ephemerality. Andy Goldsworthy has formed concentric holes with a variety of materials, many of which are less durable than the dried clay of Holes. In one work, Sand holes for the incoming tide, 1997, (fig. 17) (33) Goldsworthy built a mound of sand, softly cone shaped, on a beach in Rockcliffe, Dumfriesshire at low tide. Facing away from the waves, approximately twenty concentric holes recede into the mound, each slightly deeper and narrower than the last. As the holes deepen they darken—leading to a shadowed center, or only the suggestion of a center within the darkness. Over a series of photographs in Time, a catalog of Goldsworthy’s work, Sand holes for the incoming tide is indeed washed away by its recipient, the tide. Looking at these sand holes the viewer, as in Holes, attempts to see through time into its past and its future.
Figure 17: Andy Goldsworthy, Sand holes for the incoming tide, Rockcliffe, Dumfriesshire, March 1997. (photos: Andy Goldsworthy)
But can they succeed? Sand holes for the incoming tide does consider the future and past theoretically, but it does not actually confront them or exist within them—it has neither future nor past itself. The artwork is experienced through its images, and these images do not change. The center is forever obscured in shadow—almost foreseeable but never quite seen—until its imaged collapse. The artwork itself does change, but it changes so quickly that the full duration of the artwork seems to be only a few moments. As a result, although the concentric form of the artwork may lead the viewer to consider the future and the past, the artwork itself only ever showcases the present, a moment, and so offers no real way to imagine a future or past that does change—beyond immediate destruction. The future is still mystifying, unstable, or nonexistent, depending on if you consider the earthwork or its image. As we struggle to visualize a future where humanity and nature coexist sustainably, we should be turning to artworks that imagine possible ways humanity and nature could coexist sustainably. We need to witness collaborations between humanity and nature where a persistent relationship is formed, where ‘sustainability’ is actually sustained.
To be able to effectively consider climate change through an artwork, two temporal conditions must occur. First, the artwork must be durable—it must showcase the ability to form ideas and structures that last far into the future (that investment in the future) and, second, it must embrace that even durability is not permanence. It must both exist and change over long timescales. These are the conditions that set Holes apart from Sand holes for the incoming tide. Holes is a ‘permanent’ work, it is intended to be durable, but it is also not static—both iconographically and physically. The clay dries, it cracks, and it changes color—but the rain does not wash it away. It is a long duration work about the passage of time. Unlike Sand holes, Holes maintains its three-dimensionality: its realness, its tactile presence, is lasting. Due to its temporal iconography, receding concentric holes, Holes leads us to think about time—its time and our own—its durability, and our durability. The durability of human/nature collaboration.
Room - Interaction
Symbiosis is not just the existence in the same place over time of two things, it is interaction between them. In Room, Andy Goldsworthy explores the importance of this interaction, and our awareness of it. (figs. 18, 19) Inside Room, the walls, the ceiling, and the floor are all completely covered in cracked clay. The room is otherwise left empty, emphasizing the texture of the surrounding surface. The clay on the walls and the ceiling is deep brown and is covered in light beige cracks a few inches long. Sporadically when these cracks intersect their node emanates a bright beige color, like the glow of a far away star. On each wall, these bright nodes cluster into galaxy-like groups. They are particularly concentrated along the middle of the back wall, recalling our view of the milky way galaxy from our position inside of it. Surrounded by these clay walls, as if floating in space, Room calls attention to where you are right now, to your particular existence in both space and time. Where are you? All three Clay Houses have rooms, but this is Room.
Figures 18 & 19: Clay Houses (Room), with detail view (photos: Raina Hatcher)
One definition of Room is as “space, esp. enough space, to contain something or in which to do something” (34) By calling this room Room, Goldsworthy asserts both its emptiness and its potential. Room is, literally, the space between things. Room is required before anything else can exist. This iconographically connects to the idea of Wuji, or the eternal void in Taoism:
There was something undefined and complete, coming into
existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless,
standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in
no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of
all things. (35)
Like Wuji, Room is the fabric from which everything is born. It is space, the expansive black, the distance between particles that allows them to interact in novel ways. It is the ground, the fertile soil from which things grow or do not grow. It is the necessary background upon which things can form.
Room is what allows things to exist and by existing to interact, but it is also what keeps them apart. Another definition of room, one that has already been used frequently throughout this essay, is “a space within a building enclosed by walls or separated from other similar spaces by walls or partitions.” (36) In this sense a room is directly defined by its borders. The title Room calls attention to the room available within it, the presence of space and its potential, but by leaving this space empty, and instead covering the walls with clay, Goldsworthy also calls attention to its borders. Room is the space within, but the clay is on the walls, and walls are a boundary. Room is both. Room exposes what was once invisible, it provokes awareness of where you are, and of who and what is around you. Room draws attention to the walls, and their function: who and what is kept in and out?
Since the clay floor is fragile, Room cannot be fully entered. Instead, there is a small railed stone ledge that protrudes from the entrance of Room, extending a few feet into the space, where a maximum of four people are permitted to stand to ‘enter’ the room. This thin ledge floats above the floor of the room. Standing on it, clay surrounds you in every direction—but only for a moment. Quickly you are ushered out again as the next visitor attempts to ‘enter’ Room. Like walking around Boulder, standing behind the railing of Room, being blocked in such a clear way, heightens bodily awareness. But now, we are prompted not just to consider the location of our body, but our bodily agency. The floor is fragile, so we cannot walk on it. There is a specific level of access we have been granted to the artwork.
When viewing Clay Houses in person, before now I had been interacting with the artwork in a particular way, but I had not been entirely aware of it. For any of the Clay Houses to be opened and entered, a museum attendant must be present to unlock the house. As I entered Boulder and Holes, the attendant was always watching, and I had to step carefully to avoid touching the artwork, but I still believed I had access to the art even if it was mediated. With Room, standing at the threshold before being quickly ushered out, I was never fully granted access to the art—and I realized I never had been. When Glenstone is open, you are only guaranteed access to the exterior of Room. Clay Houses is open for just two hours a day, and since a museum attendant must be present to unlock each house, typically only one house is open on a given day, and Room is rarely picked over the more insta-worthy Boulder and Holes. (37) Who has access to Room? Like most rooms, Room has a door that can be closed. Who has access to its shelter? Room can never be fully entered, and more often than not its threshold cannot be crossed at all. Due to this barrier of access, most people who visit Glenstone only experience the exterior of Room.
Walking past Room on the gravel path that traverses the surrounding woodlands, or walking up the wood chip path that leads to its front door, visitors still seem to be surrounded by walls. In the film Leaning into the Wind, Goldsworthy says there are “two different ways of looking at the world. You can walk on the path or you can walk through the hedge.” (fig. 20) (38)
Figure 20: Andy Goldsworthy walking through a hedge in the film Leaning into the Wind, by Thomas Reidelscheimer. (Image courtesy: Magnolia Films)
At Glenstone, You are only permitted to walk on the path. (39) You are in a gallery. Look, don’t touch. The walls are part of the artwork, part of your experience, whether inside of Room or outside of it. You are in a gallery. This is not just ‘nature’. Rebecca Lee Reynolds describes this phenomenon in the essay “Beyond the Green Cube: Typologies of Experience at American Sculpture Parks.” (2011) In the essay’s introduction, Reynolds explains that:
[m]any writings on American sculpture parks and sculpture gardens open with a lyrical description of a sculpture inhabiting “Nature,” becoming a part of the landscape through washes of rain or snow and the beating down of the sun. The descriptions serve to emphasize that such artwork is not protected by the usual gallery elements – things like a ceiling and four white walls and humidity controls. Out in the “wild” where they can breathe without restriction, they seem more at home. … Such descriptions revel in the illusion that these sculptures are simply outside “in nature.” … we enjoy the effect without wanting to be reminded that it has been created by the structure of the sculpture park or sculpture garden, both landscaped spaces designed to display sculpture. As display spaces, these “green cubes” offer a green version of the white cube gallery, … a space designed to hide its own construction. (40)
To form a sustainable relationship with nature, we need to become aware of how we are interacting with nature. Glenstone is not against sustainability, its grounds are rehabilitated land covered in native plants, but it is still hiding its own construction. This is not untouched ‘nature’, this is ‘nature’ constructed by humans. There are benefits to this construction, to the cultivation and curation of a sculpture park—Clay Houses would be much less accessible without the well maintained paths that lead to it—but this construction should not be hidden. ‘Room’ is both the potential and limits of space. If we are not aware of ‘room’, we may not realize how it is shaping us, how it is shaping everything around us. If we interact without awareness, we cannot interact thoughtfully. The goal of a sculpture park should not be to create the illusion of a relationship with nature, whilst really maintaining full control over nature, but to create an actual interactive and cohabitative relationship with nature.
To foster a sustainable relationship between humanity and nature, we must learn how to interact sustainably. At this moment, the humans with the biggest carbon footprints, who use and waste the most resources, are also the most insulated from its effects. Humans who take plane rides, use AC, eat meat daily, and ‘throw away’ trash bags full of wasted food and single use packaging. This includes myself, and most likely you, the reader. When we throw something away, where is it thrown? In the era of climate change, as we face the physical realness of our disregard for nature, it has become clear that there is no way not to interact with nature. To live is to interact, to affect and to be affected. Thump. We have always been participating in a web of symbiotic relationships, in a shared ecosystem. We are interacting, and we must be aware of how we are interacting. If we want our interaction to not be harmful, we have to learn to live with nature as nature.
Conclusion
Viewed as one earthwork, the iconography of Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes) symbolically recalls the entire cosmos. It is celestial bodies, space, and orbits. The matter of planets and stars interacts across space-time to create orbits—they cannot be isolated. Duration, location, and interactivity are present in all of the Clay Houses, and through their collective viewing we become aware of the necessity of considering each. They do not function separately, all three must be examined to achieve sustainability. This is cross pollination.
What does it mean to live with nature? What does it look like? In the era of climate change, as we face unprecedented environmental transformation, we are starting to seek a more sustainable and intentional way to interact with nature—and are realizing we must learn how to make a home for ourselves, for humans, within nature. In “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” Cronan argues that if we continue to represent nature and humanity as opposites, we “leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.” (41) Clay Houses (Boulder, Room, Holes) gives us that hope, by trying to represent what an honorable human place in nature might look like. In Clay Houses, Goldsworthy makes homes: Boulder, Room, and Holes are houses, they are places of protection and shelter. They are built of sustainable materials and coexist with their surroundings with the intent to last. The survival of humanity and nature alike are fostered through their collaboration—at least in this instance. We cannot all live in forest huts, so this is not a realistic picture of how humanity should actually live. What Clay Houses represents is not a scalable housing solution, but what it does represent is still useful.
Like the thump of a walnut, Clay Houses is a reminder: in Goldsworthy’s own words, “We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.” (42) Humanity cannot exist without nature, and believing nature only exists beyond the outskirts of human influence is fundamentally flawed. The human is the natural. Humanity is always inside of nature, because nature is inside of humanity. As a part of nature, we have a duty to ourselves to reshape the way we interact with the planet—and this change begins with representation. Once we have seen beauty occur in that in-between space where nature and humanity coexist, we might learn to apply that possibility when we create new cities or new environmental policies. We cannot exist with nature from beyond it, and the effects of climate change will not be solved by creating new national parks and forest reserves. We have to learn to consider what materials we use, how long they last, and if our creations cohabit their environment or overwhelm it. Of course, one artwork that attempts to balance the relationship between humanity and nature does not solve climate change. Clay Houses is not the solution, it is not scalable action. But, it does prompt viewers to consider its location, duration, and interactivity, as well as their own.
How complex it will be to develop an interactive and cohabitative relationship with nature is well illustrated by a (not so) hypothetical situation I was asked to imagine and resolve after presenting an earlier iteration of this essay, “The Solution to Wilderness: Symbiosis in the Earthworks of Andy Goldsworthy” at University of Maryland’s Annual Art History Undergraduate Symposium (2024):
If an acorn fell from a nearby tree and landed directly next to Clay Houses, and as this new tree grew it became clear its roots were going to disrupt the foundation of the earthwork, what should be conserved? The sapling or the earthwork? Should Clay Houses be maintained by removing the growing tree, or should the tree be allowed to grow even if it disrupts the earthwork, attempts to claim the same space?
Many people at the symposium felt that if the tree was not allowed to grow, that the earthwork could not be considered ecologically positive. One interpretation of this response is that it showcases how prevalent discomfort with human-nature mutual durability currently is. Even though Clay Houses is surrounded by trees, the fact that the earthwork takes up space that a future tree could inhabit (not even a tree that exists currently) means it is oppressive of nature. Leave. No. Trace. This interpretation is unsustainable, but that does not mean I can assert with confidence that the sapling should be pulled out of the ground. Ecological awareness is rarely so absolute.
Figures 21 & 22: Photographs of Richard Serra’s Shift, taken in 1970 and 2023 respectively. (photos: Richard Serra, Atlas Obscura User ‘shakha’)
In The Ecological Site, 2018, James Nisbet explores the relationship between an earthwork and its site over time by considering how Richard Serra’s Shift has dramatically changed over time physically, and whether or not in the name of ‘conservation’ the artwork should be returned to its initial photographed state. (figs. 21, 22) Nisbet ultimately argues that for a site-specific artwork to be truly ecological, it must interact with its site, and thus change over time, as the (ecological) site itself is not fixed:
... [T]he ecological artwork exists as subject to chaotic and sometimes dramatic change, sustains cultural meaning over time, and resists the possibility that only intentional or especially human agency will govern its presence in the world. … With respect to site specificity, it is clear that sites are not fixed to the prevailing conditions present at either the moment an artist finishes working or the condition depicted in a site’s initial documentation. (43)
By accepting this change, embracing interaction and not seeking utter control and stasis, we become better equipped to function in this changing, interactive, ecological world. From this perspective, Clay Houses is well worthy of critique. Holes does not actually physically recede into the hillside—it just appears to. Beneath its clay and stone walls, Clay Houses hides a cement structure. The red dirt on its floors is not structural, it is just a thin dusting over cement. This cement enclosure’s goal is to achieve durability, minimizing the potential for a tree's roots to pierce its walls, but it is worth questioning if this is the right way for durability to be achieved. Clay Houses does allow spiders to build webs over its walls, and salamanders to crawl between its stones, but I am not allowed to touch it. It is difficult to determine how much and what change to embrace. That is why reacting to climate change is so difficult. When do we bend, and when do we ask others to bend?
If Clay Houses cannot model scaleable action, how useful can it really be? And, does it really counter nature as beautiful and pristine, when the earthwork itself is so beautiful and the surrounding environment is so pristine? These are all important considerations, but it seems that even an earthwork this polite and well-aligned with current sentiment provokes controversy. Some people at the symposium wholeheartedly disagreed that Clay Houses modeled sustainable interaction between humanity and nature, and were adamant that ‘permanent’ environmental artwork should never be built in a natural environment. We are not even comfortable with Clay Houses. We still have a long way to go. Timothy Morton has said: “Beauty is always a little bit weird, a little bit disgusting.” (44) Before we can push people to accept the wonderfully yucky chaotic possibilities of our engagement with nature, we must begin by showcasing that building a home for humans in nature does not have to destroy ‘beauty’.
Currently, earthworks like Clay Houses are still undervalued and under-discussed. The first real catalog of Goldsworthy’s permanent work, which included Clay Houses, was published in 2017, almost thirty years after Andy Goldsworthy: a Collaboration with Nature, and is preceded by multiple other similarly ephemeral collections. Unsurprisingly, the earthworks we most need to look at are the ones we are least drawn to pay attention to. This essay is a plea for your attention. Thump. Pow! BAM!
Art is imagination turned real, it challenges our expectations, and jostles us. To change our understanding of nature, we will have to confront some of our most basic beliefs, to reevaluate what it means to be human. Art can help us begin. In her essay “Art Objects,” Jeanette Winterson explains that when we look at art, it changes our way of seeing, and our capacity of feeling: “Art opens the heart.” (45) Children raised in the era of climate change often struggle to even visualize a sustainable future, overwhelmed by the scale of climate change for the same reasons we first felt the planet was too big for us to hurt. Their understanding of the future is one of grief, mourning, and numbness—in short, their hearts are closed. (46) In spite of the fullness of the universe, “the tragic paradigm of human life is lack, loss, finality, a primitive doomsaying that has not been repealed by technology or medical science. The arts stand in the way of this doomsaying. Art objects. The nouns become an active force, not a collector’s item. Art objects.” (47)
Clay Houses objects to finality, to closed hearts that believe that nothing will change because nothing is wrong, or believe that nothing will change because it is already too late to stop climate catastrophe. It may not be a perfect model, but it allows us to imagine the possibility of sustainability instead of believing it is not possible. Looking at Clay Houses, engaging with its attempt, prompts you to consider what it is doing right and what it is still doing wrong.
Everything is so complicated, we all struggle to imagine what sustainable and scalable action looks like. Establishing a lasting relationship with nature will create complications, but a symbiotic future requires reflecting upon, seeing, acknowledging, and overcoming these complications. The in-between space, the space of caring and cohabitation is what we seek. Art is imagination, it is provocative, but it is rarely the answer. It is meant to stir you. Stir you to consider, well where should I live? What should I do now?
To better understand my own engagement with nature, I turned to the nonhuman I was already in conversation with, the walnut tree, and to art. Using ink made from its husks and pressed leaves, as well as oil paint and canvas, I am attempting to better understand our relationship. At the time of writing, I am in the middle of this canvas conversation. (fig. 23) The final artwork will be the result of the labor of the walnut tree and my own labor—a direct collaboration between us.
Figure 23: Have a peek… this is the reference photograph for my artwork. (photo: Raina Hatcher)
I do not know how to solve climate change, but I do know one thing we must do: interact. With culture, with art, and with our own environment. It all starts with representation and awareness, so make it happen yourself. Both actively and passively. Visit artworks and engage with culture. Collaborate with nature yourself. Make your trash can a little harder to reach. Keep your windows open. Do not cut down the walnut tree. Listen for the sound of falling walnuts, and enjoy their thump.
Bibliography
1. T. J. Demos, Emily Eliza Scott, and Subhankar Banerjee, The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021).
2. Andy Goldsworthy, Time (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000).
3. Hand to Earth : Andy Goldsworthy Sculpture, 1976-1990.
4. Molly Donovan, The Andy Goldsworthy Project, 2010.
5. Note: He does not release these alone, but he is always involved and writes the majority of their text.
6. Note: Some additional insight can be gained through conversations with Glenstone employees on site but although these employees are extremely knowledgeable they are not always completely consistent about facts and details.
7. Molly Donovan, The Andy Goldsworthy Project, 2010.
8. “Nature - Glenstone,” https://www.glenstone.org/nature.
9. Note: Vernacular architecture is a style of building that emphasizes local needs and available materials, often characterized by their practicality and environmental adaptiveness.
10. Note: I was told the source of the wood by a Glenstone employee, but it could not be confirmed elsewhere. The rest of the material’s sources are confirmed by The Andy Goldsworthy Project.
11. Molly Donovan, The Andy Goldsworthy Project, 2010.
12. Note: It may feel fragile, but this is only visual fragility. Boulder is actually composed of rammed earth that is surrounded by just 2 inches of clay.
13. Webster’s New World College Dictionary (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).
14. Note: Andy Goldsworthy’s Boulder does not quite fit this definition. It is not made of claystone, it is made of loose clay, as is apparent by the cracks in its surface (the clay drying and the shrinkage caused by loss of water is enough to fracture its delicate surface, indicating it is not hard)—it is thus not actually a rock.
15. Note: clay, which along with other types of soil is colloquially called ‘earth’.
16. Blaise Pascal and Gertrude Burford Rawlings, Pascal’s Pensées; or, Thoughts on Religion (Mount Vernon, N.Y. : Peter Pauper Press, 1900).
17. Plato and R. D. (Richard Dacre) Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (London : Macmillan, 1888).
18. Andy Goldsworthy, Midsummer Snowballs (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2001).
19. “Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue: Timeline 1976-1986,” https://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/timeline/.
20. Andy Goldsworthy, Midsummer Snowballs (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2001).
21. Cronon William, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html.
22. Note: Beneath its clay and stone walls, Clay Houses hides a cement structure.
23. Manuel Lima, The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge (Chronicle Books, 2017).
24. Manuel Lima, The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge (Chronicle Books, 2017).
25. Ibid.
26. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (New York : Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1925).
27. Manuel Lima, The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge (Chronicle Books, 2017).
28. Note: light to indicate larger cells during the growing season, and dark to indicate denser cells when growth slows down in colder months.
29. Bryan Nash Gill, Woodcut; Note: Cracks from the curing of the wood stretch out from the center of the tree rings and marks from cutting and sanding the woodblock are visible, particularly towards the top center of the print. As the cracks and marks intermingle with the clear concentric rings, the history of the tree's growth over its lifetime and the history of human influence is combined.
30. Bryan Nash Gill, Woodcut.
31. Bryan Nash Gill, Woodcut.
32. Ömür Harmanşah, “Deep Time and Landscape History: How Can Historical Particularity Be Translated?,” in Timescales, ed. Bethany Wiggin, Carolyn Fornoff, and Patricia Eunji Kim, Thinking across Ecological Temporalities (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), 39–54.
33. Andy Goldsworthy, Time (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000).
34. Webster’s New World College Dictionary (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).
35. Lao-tzu, “Verse 25,” in Tao Te Ching, trans. J. Legge, https://sacred-texts.com/tao/taote.htm.
36. Webster’s New World College Dictionary (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).
37. Note: As in is photographable, and thus postable on social media.
38. Thomas Riedelsheimer, Leaning into the wind: Andy Goldsworthy (Curzon Artificial Eye, 2018).
39. Note: This is, as Glenstone states, to preserve the delicate ecosystem of the surrounding woodlands—but if Glenstone planted these woodlands, why make them so delicate? Sustainability can be robust.
40. Rebecca Lee Reynolds, “Beyond the Green Cube: Typologies of Experience at American Sculpture Parks,” Public Art Dialogue 1, no. 2 (2011): 215–40.
41. Cronon William, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html.
42. Thomas Riedelsheimer, Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (Burlington, VT: Docurama, 2004).
43. James Nisbet, “The Ecological Site,” in Ecologies, Agents, Terrains (Yale University Press, 2018).
44. Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People.
45. Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Random House, 2013).
46. Sarah Jaquette Ray, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (Univ of California Press, 2020).
47. Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Random House, 2013).
