Rock Balancing – Goldsworthy
November 23rd, 2008
Rock balancing can be a performance art, a spectacle, or a devotion, depending upon the interpretation by its audience. Rock balancing is also an incredible team building activity – which we incorporate in many Grand Dynamics programs. Essentially, it involves placing some combination of rock or stone in arrangements which require patience and sensitivity to generate, and which appear to be physically impossible while actually being only highly improbable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_balancing
What I like about Rock Balancing is this notion of achieving the seemingly impossible. Invariably, first time rock balancers will share a common perception that the intention of such a precarious balancing act is indeed impossible. Several minutes with acute, minor adjustments, and you have a creation that breaks through limiting beliefs and confirms our ability to achieve the “impossible”.
I was first introduced to Rock Balancing by Master Rick Erickson, which, coincidentally, happened to be the same time that I was introduced to Andy Goldworthy by my friend Brian Prax. Collaboration with Nature is Goldsworthy’s first book – awesome.
Andy Goldsworthy (born 26 July 1956) is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland who produces site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects, to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment. The materials used in Andy Goldsworthy’s art often include brightly-coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He has been quoted as saying, “I think it’s incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.”[7] Goldsworthy is generally considered the founder of modern rock balancing. For his ephemeral works, Goldsworthy often uses only his bare hands, teeth, and found tools to prepare and arrange the materials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy#Biography
My intention is to meet Andy Goldworthy in May of 2009, and to balance some things with him. If anyone know how to contact him, please let me know!
