Artist Biography: Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy
Photo: Jacob Ehrenberg

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire, England, in 1956 and currently resides in Scotland. He studied at Bradford School of Art and Preston Polytechnic and has been making art in the environment, both rural and urban, since the mid-1970s. He is an Andrew D. White Professor at Cornell University. Over the past 25 years, Goldsworthy has gained a significant reputation for both his ephemeral works and his permanent installations that draw out the endemic character of a place. The artist works with natural materials, such as leaves, sand, ice, and stone that often originate from the local site.

Goldsworthy has produced more than 70 exhibitions and projects all over the world including those in the Canadian Arctic; Digne, France; the streets of London; and Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. In addition, he has made temporary museum installations at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1997); The Metropolitan Museum or Art (2004), New York; and The Tate, Liverpool (2004), among others. Goldsworthy's other large-scale installations in the United States include Garden of Stones (2003, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York); Three Cairns (2001-2003, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa); Neuberger Cairn (2001, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York); West Coast Cairn (2002, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego); Stone River (2001, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California); and Storm King Wall (1999, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York). All of these large-scale commissioned works have their origins in ephemeral works.