Andy Goldsworthy and Leave No Trace Ethics

Fleeting and ephemeral, Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptures incorporate solely organic matter as a material source; his pieces highlight the contrast between the natural and the man-made, transforming naturally scattered matter into an ordered series. Each sculpture is temporary and transient, and though captured in a static moment of creation through photography, his sculptures continuously transform and evolve from creation to deterioration, documenting the processes of time and the effects of natural forces. In this way Goldsworthy uses seasonal ephemerality itself as a material through which his pieces reflect an energetic transformation. Many of his sculptures incorporate a vibrant gradient of leaves, each in differing states of autumnal change and transition, while others connect icicles in fractal growths, or arrange stones in intricately balanced formations.

While the forms he creates are apparent in their human manipulation, many are simultaneously subtle in their deviation. Through his use of organic curving lines and spiraling shapes that mimic the structures and cyclical processes of the natural world, his environmental sculptures reference nature not only in material but also in form. I find his pieces strikingly mesmerizing, in that although they exist through an artificial manipulation, they appear, to me, to be harmonious with their surroundings. The natural world, while rearranged and disturbed, is simultaneously respected. I find the dialogue he creates with the landscape to be celebratory of a balanced collaboration and communion with the environment, exploring the way we exist in and interact with natural spaces.

And yet inversely, one could easily interpret Goldsworthy’s work as some do with recreational cairns – as a disruption of the natural ecosystem, a graffitied mark of the human hand, a manifestation of the often unconscious mindset humans possess that they must leave their mark, inserting themselves as dominant over their surroundings. Through this lens, Goldsworthy’s work might be seen not as a beautiful cohesion with nature but rather as antithetical to Leave-No-Trace ethics, degrading a naturally beautiful space through an unnecessary marker of civilization – the human ego entering a wilderness landscape, altering what should remain as an escape from urban saturation, a pause from the chaos of elsewhere.

I certainly understand this argument… but I nonetheless remain enamored by Goldsworthy’s environmental sculptures. Perhaps certain aspects of Leave-No-Trace focus on what is often an unattainable purity – I am hardly suggesting that hikers trample on endangered species or leave trash and waste along the trail – but rather, I am raising the question of whether there might also be space for Goldsworthy’s art in the dialogue of respectful wilderness existence.

                                     Rowan Leaves Laid Around Hole, Andy Goldsworthy (1987)