To achieve the quiet beauty of his art, Andy Goldsworthy spends long hours in rough weather, engaged in a tug-of-war with nature. He wrestles heavy stones on top of one another to form tall, egg-shaped landmarks known as cairns. He painstakingly covers fallen logs with bright golden bands of Dutch elm leaves—a last hurrah for a proud species decimated by disease. He pulverizes white chalk to lay a long, wandering path in the woods that gleams in the moonlight. Works like these are as much about the transience of life as they are about a sense of place and the pleasures of color, light and form. In Passage, the British artist's latest book, he once again provides diary excerpts that chronicle his daily successes and failures. The lush color photographs he takes to document peak moments of the birth, glory and decay of his art are as beautiful as ever. Unlike the other books, however, Passage--which begins in 2000 and darts back and forth over the next few years--is shadowed by a more urgent sense of mortality. Goldworthy's recently deceased father is in his thoughts, and a major project he tackles is the memorial Garden of Stones for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. The garden's giant boulders pose many difficulties--finding the right ones, acquiring them, moving them, experimenting with cutting processes and coping with the elderly stonecutter's frequent tantrums. Hollowed out, the stones will be filled with trowels of earth (a ritual recalling burial) and tiny oak saplings, symbolic of life. "The partnership between tree and stone will be stronger for the tree having grown from the stone, rather than being stuck into it," Goldsworthy writes in his straightforward style. (An essay about this project by the historian Simon Schama, previously published in The New Yorker, is one of several pieces by other writers included in the book.) Once again, Goldsworthy succeeds in showing how seemingly simple ideas and actions can deeply engage both natural forces and human emotions. —Cathy Curtis

From Booklist
*Starred Review* "I don't know what will happen but look forward to whatever changes occur," writes sculptor Goldsworthy, a statement that can stand as his credo. An artist who works with nature in nature, he creates astonishingly subtle, ephemeral, seemingly impossible, and elegantly mysterious works out of stone, sticks, leaves, stalks, ice, and sand, constructions vulnerable to sun, wind, storms, tides, and time. Documentation is an integral aspect of his art, and, consequently, Goldsworthy, the subject of the gorgeously meditative, award-winning documentary Rivers and Tides (2004), has created a number of beautiful books. His newest covers many recent works--including Garden of Stones, a Holocaust memorial in New York City and the subject of an essay by Simon Schama--and tracks his ongoing involvement with an ancient tradition, the building of cairns. His are not mere stacks of stones marking a trail but rather elaborately constructed and gracefully balanced egg-shaped forms that bring into focus the beauty of their surroundings. Magical and exquisite, Goldsworthy's sculptures move us to look more carefully at the world around us and consider more deeply our place within the fine mesh of life. Donna Seaman
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Book Description
Andy Goldsworthy's Passage focuses on the journeys that people, rivers, landscapes, and even stones take through space and time. A cairn made by the renowned sculptor in the Scottish village where he lives reveals the influence that his work close to home has on projects he creates elsewhere. A series involving elm trees, from glowing yellow leaves to dead branches, exemplifies his work's vigorous beauty as well as its association with death and decay. Creations on the beach and in rivers explore the passage of time, while a white chalk path investigates the passing from day into night.

Passage also includes the Garden of Stones, a Holocaust memorial at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, where the artist planted 18 oak trees through holes in hollowed-out, earth-filled boulders. Documenting these and other recent works, this beautiful book is an eloquent testament to Goldsworthy's determination to deepen his understanding of the world around him, and his relationship with it, through his art. AUTHOR BIO: Andy Goldsworthy's work is regularly exhibited in Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. Although commissions take him all over the world, the landscape around his home in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, remains at the heart of his work. Goldsworthy's best-selling books for Abrams include A Collaboration with Nature, Time, Stone, Wall, and Wood. Terry Friedman is an architectural historian and former principal keeper of Leeds City Art Gallery and Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture in Leeds, England. He curated the first major retrospective of Goldsworthy's work, in 1990.

About the Author
Andy Goldsworthy's work is regularly exhibited in Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. Although commissions take him all over the world, the landscape around his home in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, remains at the heart of his work. Goldsworthy's best-selling books for Abrams include A Collaboration with Nature, Time, Stone, Wall, and Wood. Terry Friedman is an architectural historian and former principal keeper of Leeds City Art Gallery and Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture in Leeds, England. He curated the first major retrospective of Goldsworthy's work, in 1990.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"An account of a cairn built on the crest of a small hill at the entrance to the village in Scotland where Andy Goldsworthy lives reveals the importance of his work close to home, which is the inspiration for so much that he then creates elsewhere." "A series of works involving elm trees made near Goldsworthy's home exemplifies his work's beauty as well as its association with death and decay, here made more poignant by the knowledge that so few elms survive since disease wiped out hundreds of thousands of trees." "Passage also includes Goldsworthy's most recent commission, Garden of Stones, a Holocaust memorial at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Here eighteen oak trees were planted through small holes, in hollowed-out, earth-filled boulders. Growing in an almost impossible circumstances, the trees carry powerful symbolic meaning." Documenting these and other recent works, Passage is a testament to Goldsworthy's determination to both deepen and extent his understanding of the world around him and his and his relationship with it through his art.

SYNOPSIS

Some of the works filmed in the process of their creation in Rivers and Tides, the documentary film on the artist, are also found in this attractive volume. The volume features a wealth of color photographs, many of them full- page (the book is slightly oversize, at 10.5x11.5"), of Goldsworthy's sculptures and installations, made of materials gathered in nature. Featuring sculpture made for natural and manmade sites, the book includes photographs of stone cairns; holes; ephemeral arrangements of leaves, branches, stones, or ice; and the 2004 installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The photos appear with the artist's journal entries on the process of producing the work and commentary by other authors. Not indexed. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Stones, icicles, leaves, branches, grass-such are the media of England-born, Scotland-based artist Goldsworthy, who creates simple, striking and evanescent sculptures on beaches, rocks and forest floors: small shards of ice that he freezes onto stones, leaves he layers over the trunk of a dead elm. In more than 200 color photographs, Goldsworthy documents his works and their subsequent transformations as the leaves brown and the icicles melt, revealing as his subject the relationship between nature and time. Unlike the works by a previous generation of earth artists, such as Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, Goldsworthy's pieces have immediately connected with a larger public, as the success of his many books (Time; Hand to Earth; etc) suggests. In an essay (originally published in the New Yorker) about Goldsworthy's "Garden of Stones," commissioned by the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Simon Schama declares that Goldsworthy is not the "placid pastoralist" that some of his critiques would suggest, but "a dramaturge of nature's temper, often fickle, often foul." Other projects highlighted here include "Three Cairns," stone structures that Goldsworthy built and photographed in California, New York and Iowa, and "Moonlit Path," a winding trail of pulverized chalk that glows hauntingly in a West Sussex forest. Goldsworthy fans will relish the photos, as well as the artist's accompanying notes: "I have to start with a strong idea but with an open mind about how best that idea can be realized." (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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