Artist Statement - Camille

Artist Statement

                Andy Goldsworthy’s documentary we watched about his art and the process of making his pieces inspired me to make pieces similar to that myself. I took the opportunity presented to us and created art inspired by his work and the nature surrounding us. His work inspired by the rivers and tides gave me the idea to do the same type of work giving back to nature and the Earth. Although my art is much smaller and not as complex or elaborate as Goldsworthy’s, we came up with ideas making sketches, trying and failing, and producing art truly satisfactory.

                Our first piece was a nest type thing. We used sticks and twigs weaving them around the tree and its branches. Although it proved difficult in the beginning, once there was a base, the nest finally came together. Using different sized sticks was helpful, balancing out the weight to different parts of the nest somewhat equally. Smaller twigs often broke or fell off the nest while bigger sticks occasionally weighed the nest down too much causing it to mildly fall apart. Once the weight was spread out fairly evenly, the nest stayed in tack pretty well. Then we added a few leaves to make our nest look a little more natural.

                Our second piece looked a little bit like a target or a bulls-eye. There were rings around the bottom of the tree in the shape of circles. First we sketched a design for our piece and then we began. After deciding what the best and most effective material would be to make this piece of art was, we gathered the materials. We used the stems or the bottom of dandelions. Most of the flowers had already fallen off the top of the stems. Once a fair amount of them were gathered, we laid them out and picked the best ones. Then, we started laying them out around the base of the tree to create rings. Capturing the whole process, we put the stems end to end in ring shapes. To top it off, we lined dandelion tops right around the tree at the top of our first ring. Our inspiration for this piece was the rings inside of the tree used to determine the age of the tree. We tried to bring the inside of the tree to the outside.

                Our inspiration was nature and life. We tried to give back to the earth. Nests are places where more creatures and organisms come to life. Birds and other animals bring their offspring to life in nests. To me, nests symbolize life. Using art, we wanted to give back to the earth with nature.  The “Ring Around the Rosy” piece was also inspired by life.  The rings inside of the tree are used to tell how old the tree is. They also tell a story of the tree’s life, the conditions it lived through with weather. We wanted to bring the tree’s story to life and show it for the world to see. The rings we made in our piece were symbolic of the rings inside the tree.