Creating: A Personal Exploration

When I set out to make my own environmental sculpture, I didn’t know exactly where it would take me. I knew I wanted to create something from nature, but that was about it. For the past weeks, I have been exploring the works of established artists and writing about their different approaches and methods. Some, like Dougherty, take nature and shape it to their own expression. Others, like Goldsworthy, let their expressions be shaped by nature. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was headed, which route I would lean towards more.

I began on a sunny day, a day that positively invited you outside. I walked around campus, considering where I should begin with my sculpture. There were branches strewn all around, owing to a windy night, and so I began collecting them. I amassed quite a pile, and brought them back by the fistful to my dorm. Over the following days, I kept my eyes open, stopping every time I saw another branch that stood out to me.

Before long, I had what I deemed to be a sufficient number of branches for whatever shape they would take. They were stored in an alcove next to my dorm, and for a long time they just sat there. Although I had been thinking and sketching for a while, I had not yet alighted on a definite course of action.

Then I realized that I had been going about it all wrong. This was not a process that could be pre-meditated, but one that had to be experienced and done in the moment. I left my room and went downstairs to gather together my pile of branches.

I then spent some time really looking at them and contemplating them. They were all so similar and yet so different. Each served the same function, but there were differences in color, shape, and texture. I began breaking them into roughly uniform lengths, a process which accentuated the differences and gave each a certain individuality.

Next, I started to mess around with their placement. I stacked them, piled them, arranged them into color gradations and then rearranged them, trying to get acquainted with the subtleties of their differences and similarities.

After a bit, I got up and walked around until I found a spot that felt right. I settled on a tree on the quiet green, right near the Van Wickle gates. I laid my sticks out and paused, really looking at the tree. I picked up one stick and put it down near the base of the tree. Then I picked up another and put it by the first. I did this again and again, spiraling out and away from the tree trunk. Each twig was separate, but together they flowed into one another to form a whole.

It was not much, indeed I felt rather silly just putting twigs around a tree. But then I stopped thinking about what I was doing externally and focused on the process itself. It became meditative, an organic act.

From far away, the spiral fades into obscurity. In fact, until you are walking by it, it is hard to notice it at all.

But then you are upon it, and it makes you stop for a minute. No longer is it just a tree on the quiet green, no longer is it ordinary. But then you must pause and consider: is not all of nature extraordinary?

That which we take for granted every day – trees, grass, leaves – is actually quite amazing when you think about it. Our environment is far more complex and beautiful than we often credit it for. When we think of the natural world as being spectacular, we tend to call the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls to mind. Yes, these are wonders of nature, but there are just as astounding systems that surround us right at home. The environment is not some far-off, unreachable concept, but an immediate reality. The sooner we can begin to appreciate the wonder of nature as it truly is, the sooner we can merge our immediate environment with the concept of the Environment at large and begin to understand and connect with the essence of nature.

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