| Sarah Sachs
February 2, 2005
EPortfolio #1
Donovan and Goldsworthy- Process
When asked to describe her process, Tara always refers to a certain ‘transformation’
that occurs. She describes her process as a phenomenon that she discovers
more than as a conscious decision that she makes. She uses massive amounts
of ordinary/household materials, and experiments with the processes of
accumulation and ‘growth’, to create elaborate landscapes,
and natural looking formations. She explains a, sort of, realization of
potential that occurs while she’s working with a given material
and she then assigns certain rules for the construction, which allow the
pieces to grow through repetition.
She parallels her own process with the growth of living structures and
beings: “They perform in predictable ways, and the rules for growth
are encoded in each individual cell. My work might appear organic or alive
specifically because my process mimics, in the most elementary sense,
basic systems of growth found in nature.”
She has created landscapes from piles of tar paper, stacks of drinking
straws, heaps of toothpicks. She can cut and string together Styrofoam
cups to channel and filter light through a skylight like she did in her
foam-cup installation at the ACE Gallery in New York.
So Tara’s process consists of orchestrating the growth of mass amounts
of everyday, manufactured materials, and then repeating certain actions
to create finished forms. While her process leads her to her finished
piece, her process is still a means to an end. Her process is not everything.
From studying Andy Goldsworthy I have found that his process is very different
from Tara’s because it is an ongoing exploration of the natural
world that evolves from piece to piece and never seems to end.
I think that his process is very different from most other artists’
because his focus does not seem to be on the final product. He is fascinated
by nature and uses art as a means to explore it. He is a perfect example
of a process artist because his work is an ongoing experiment to try and
understand the world around him.
“When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material
in itself, it is an opening into the process of life within and around
it. When I leave it, these processes continue.” “I couldn’t
possibly try to improve on Nature. I’m only trying to understand
it by an involvement in some of its processes.”
He began these experiments as a child. When he began working outside for
the first time he says that he first had to establish feelings/instincts
about nature. He had to physically get to know his material (nature) and
establish a personal relationship with it to really start understanding
its capabilities. He experimented with the physical characteristics of
his medium and began thinking about “impositions of nature”.
“When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf
or the stone it’s the processes that are behind them that are important.”
“That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single
isolated object but nature as a whole.”
He does create many physical works, some of them last a fraction of a
second (throwing sand into the air) and some of them will last a lifetime,
like his stone walls, but no matter how long a given piece holds together
out there, it never signifies the end of the process. His snapshots document
his developing understanding while Tara’s pieces represent finished
forms. She might return to a material that she has already used and explore
new patterns/growths but each ‘growth’ is dependant on the
specific material that she buys in bulk from Sams in any given week. Her
process may evolve over time and grow within itself, but from one material
to the next she has to start from scratch to get to know the material,
while Goldsworthy has devoted his life to getting to know his material:
nature.
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