With midwinter closing in, this week’s picture is a Cibachrome photograph of a “snow sculpture” made by the artist Andy Goldsworthy on a hillside in Blencathra, Cumbria, on a winter’s day in 1988. Part of a series of four photographs taken by the artist to record this unusual construction’s appearance, under different conditions, before its inevitable collapse, the picture is owned by the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal. Its full title, written in the style of blank verse, is “Slits cut into frozen snow / stormy / strong wind/ weather and light rapidly changing.” The work is not currently on display but intrigued readers of this column may, if they so wish, arrange to view it by appointment. The number to ring is 01539 722464.
Much of Andy Goldsworthy’s work survives only in photographic form but its ephemerality, for him, is an essential aspect of its character. “At its most successful,” he has written, “my ‘touch’ looks into the heart of nature; most days I don’t even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient – only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete.” Such remarks might conjure up the image of a self-consciously solemn Creative Artist but in fact Goldsworthy is a refreshingly down-to-earth chap. I went to interview him at his home in the Scottish borders in the late 1980s (not long after he had created the work reproduced on this page, in fact) and still have a vivid memory of being persuaded by him, against my better judgement, that it might be pleasant to go for a swim in one of the streams running close to the property. The water was so freezing...
