Synopsis
RIVERS AND TIDES: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time - Cosponsored by the University Place Art Center

"Painstakingly constructed cenotaphs of loose, flat rocks, which resemble giant pinecones, decorate the beaches and woodland clearings of several continents, thanks to a grizzled and eloquent nature spirit named Andy Goldsworthy.

A Scottish sculptor (for want of a better term) who works not just with natural materials but in situ in a variety of natural settings, Goldsworthy intuits "the lines of force that flow through nature." In time-lapse sequences we watch him assemble elaborate quasi-organic forms designed to reveal (as he explains) "something that was always there but that you’ve been blind to."

German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer (Lhasa and the Spirit of Tibet) has crafted a beautifully contemplative documentary that follows Goldsworthy over the course of a year as he accepts prestigious international commissions and works on personal projects literally in his own back yard.

He is observed both in the wild, as a monkish obsessive, and in his orderly home office, a diligent entrepreneur whose best-selling coffee-table boffice, a diligent entrepreneur whose best-selling coffee-table books contain lush photographic records of projects that are ephemeral by design, as the elements swirl in to reclaim them.

Very few art documentaries are as deeply in tune with the spirit of their subjects, and the implications are enormous, since Goldsworthy is the rare contemporary art star whose work (what a radical notion) is actually about something." —David Chute, LA Weekly