Andy Goldsworthy Passage

To achieve the quiet beauty of his art, Andy Goldsworthy spends long hours in rough weather, engaged in a tug-of-war with nature. He wrestles heavy stones on top of one another to form tall, egg-shaped landmarks known as cairns. He painstakingly covers fallen logs with bright golden bands of Dutch elm leaves—a last hurrah for a proud species decimated by disease. He pulverizes white chalk to lay a long, wandering path in the woods that gleams in the moonlight. Works like these are as much about the transience of life as they are about a sense of place and the pleasures of color, light and form. In Passage, the British artist´s latest book, he once again provides diary excerpts that chronicle his daily successes and failures. The lush color photographs he takes to document peak moments of the birth, glory and decay of his art are as beautiful as ever. Unlike the other books, however, Passage--which begins in 2000 and darts back and forth over the next few years--is shadowed by a more urgent sense of mortality.