Seeing

 

“You feel as though you’ve touched the heart of the place… That’s the way of understanding; seeing something you never saw before that was always there but you were blind to.”

-Andy Goldsworthy

 

How many stones have you walked by without noticing; how many fallen leaves or twigs? Do you look at a puddle and see potential or do you see an obstacle? How do we assign value to our surroundings? What is our natural environment worth?

 

 

For many, environmentalism is a lofty and disconnected goal. It is seen as an ideal towards which to strive, but not as an immediate reality. Oftentimes the concentration is towards distant and somewhat abstract issues. Take shorter showers, turn off your lights when you’re out, get a hybrid car. Protest the construction of new coal plants, petition for carbon emission limits. All of these make a difference, but not always one that we can immediately perceive in our daily lives. Because of this, it often seems that there is a divide between the Environment – the conceptual entity that activism strives to protect – and the environment – the tangible, natural surroundings of our everyday.

 

To bridge this gap, we must take pause. Go outside, find a tree. Put your hand up to it, behold its bark, its branches, its leaves. This is a tree. This is the environment. This is the Environment.

 

Now think: how many times have you passed this tree before? How often do you really take a moment to appreciate what it is? Environmentalism is an all-encompassing concept, not restricted to far-off, larger problems, but inclusive of each and every part of nature.

 

 

How then, can this be realized? Most will not take that moment on their own to recognize the interconnectivity of it all, to realize how we can understand other forms of life around us. To make people see this, some have taken the step to foster greater appreciation for the natural world. Some have manipulated their natural environment just enough to capture attention. These people are a group of artists who, in reverting back to the most primitive medium, have created something new. They make art from the land; they create environmental art.

 

These are artists like Andy Goldsworthy and Patrick Dougherty. They have taken nature and pushed it further, exploring the natural beauty of our world in new ways. Their art is temporary, seasonal, tidal. Like nature, it is about both the creation and the destruction. It is about the cycles of life.

 

It makes us ponder the Earth and see its beauty. This is nature we cannot take for granted, and so it opens our eyes to the fact that there really is no nature that we can take as such.

We must understand both the volatility and the fragility of the land, and environmental art is a pathway towards this. It is a road open to all who pass, beckoning towards a greater, more holistic understanding of our world and natural environment.

 

 

(Photos: 1^st and 2^nd: Andy Goldsworthy, 3^rd: Patrick Dougherty)