"Spire" by Andy Goldsworthy

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:28:21 Z

""Spire" by Andy Goldsworthy - Presidio of San Francisco Photos by Tony Deifell on an iPhone -- http://twitter.com/Deifell In 2006, artist Andy Goldsworthy visited the Presidio and was inspired by the history and character of the forest. He saw an opportunity to create a sculpture with the felled mature trees. Constructed in October 2008, The Spire tells the story of the forest, celebrates its history and natural rhythms, and welcomes the next generation of trees. It is a poetic reference to the forest’s past; as new young trees grow up to meet the sculpture, it will eventually disappear into the forest. Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956 and spent his childhood in Yorkshire, England. Goldsworthy’s work has been made in the open air, in places as diverse as the Yorkshire Dales, the North Pole, and the Australian Outback. His works in the Bay Area include Stone River at Stanford University, made from the rubble left after the Loma Prieta earthquake, and Drawn Stone at the De Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which also recalls San Francisco’s earthquakes and their effects. Goldsworthy draws his inspiration from places and creates art from the materials found close at hand, such as twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds, and thorns. The works made from these natural materials interact in different ways with their environments. The Presidio’s man-made forest is an evocative backdrop for the artist who strives “to make connections between what we call nature and what we call man-made.” Spire recalls one of Goldsworthy’s earliest sculptures, Memories, also spires of mature trees, created in 1984 in the Grizedale Forest in the Lake District of North West England. “I have not found another great location for this type of work until now.” [source: presidio.gov]"

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"Spire" by Andy Goldsworthy