“I want an intimate physical involvement with the earth. I must touch. I take nothing out with me in the way of tools, glue or rope, preferring to explore the natural bonds and tensions that exist within the earth. The season and weather conditions determine to a large extent what I make. I enjoy relying on the seasons to provide new materials.” - Andy Goldsworthy, 1980
John Dahlsen is an Australia environmental artist who produces recycled art and abstract paintings. He incorporates found objects into his artwork. Much of the objects are trash or recycled goods he has found in public which clearly makes a statement in itself. Dahlsen is in our artist line up because his work is the opposite of Goldsworthy's artwork which will return back into the Earth. For example, there is no opportunity for the plastic containers or the flips flops that is used in Dahlsen's pieces to biodegrade.
Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor and environmentalist. He organizes site specific sculptures in nature where he must work with the land instead of changing it to fit his design. The materials that he works with are all natural materials that he has found in the area of the artwork. Goldsworthy works with the environment, embracing anything that others would see as "flaws" within his art-making. He has commonly worked with ice, sticks, leaves, and rocks.
Artists
Andy Goldsworthy
Corine van der Werf
John Dahlsen
Corine van der Werf is a Dutch artist and archaeologist that works with old and new paper, organic material, textiles, and her own photos that have been collected for years. This creates intuitively very diverse "skins." She works with laying paper and objects to metaphorically represent the layers that exist within human body and soul. She focuses on how our bodies go through physical and mental changes. Werf states "Just as our body is subject to an uninterrupted process of change, our mental state also changes constantly; from active to passive, from strong to weak, from dejected to elated." Working with organic materials allows the artwork embody the idea of humans and these changes that Werf is portraying in her work.
Julia Anne Goodman
“I would be delighted if I could walk along the beaches here and find that there’s just nothing to pick up. That it’s just – it’s not there anymore. Because what that would do is, it would first of all tell me that there’s been a significant shift in mankind’s intelligence and that we have become much more environmentally conscious and that we’re not doing that sort of thing anymore.” - John Dahlsen, 2010
Julia Anne Goodman is an artist that assembles her own paper for her art making process. A previous exhibition, Eleven Months Mourning: August 19, 2007 - July 14, 2008 presents work that is all at once universal and deeply personal. With a fresh awareness of mortality after the loss of her Father, Goodman's art practice shifted. Her dissatisfaction with flat memories led Goodman to begin casting and molding handmade paper pulp into palpable surfaces. The artist pushes the material beyond the ubiquitous two-dimensions into the realm of sculpture, focusing on texture, movement, ephemerality and presence. The shift in practice quickly became a part of an 11-month public, albeit private, act of mourning.
In 2009, she built a large, hanging sculpture named, "Certain is Nothing Now", that was constructed entirely out of handmade paper and "blues" junk mail she had collected from around her neighborhood. By the way it was crafted, it almost looks as if it is a structure made out of concrete.
The four different artist profiles listed below describe how they contribute to environmental aesthetics through sustainability using unique processes. These artists practice from different parts of the world and show that the importance of sustainability is an international concern.