Bill Stamets

One artist's encounter with another artist--filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer observing sculptor Andy Goldsworthy-- allows a wondrous witnessing of art-making. Stone piles drowned by tides, red-pigmented iron mud-balls tossed into rivers, twig lattices dismembered by breezes, and icicle monuments melted by the winter sun are among the ephemeral, fascinating gestures performed by Goldsworthy and documented by Riedelsheimer. "I think you should stop filming and collect stones and do something useful instead," Goldsworthy tells the lens, after a precarious stone artwork tumbles and the rising Newfoundland tide advances up the beach. Does he mean it? If the one artist's alert camera stopped rolling, there would be no trace of the other artist's less than agile handiwork as a stone-piler. The fragility of Goldsworthy's quasi-animistic creations underscores the fragility of his standing as an artist. Riedelsheimer never interviews critics or curators to legitimate his subject, who emerges as a tremendously lucky and likeable mud-pie baker and sandcastle architect. Nor is there a clue given to indicate what he sells through the international roster of five art dealers listed in the end credits. Weather permitting, Goldsworthy does receive commissions, including one from the MCA in February 1998. When Goldsworthy's riverine stone wall in upstate New York is erected by professional "wallers," he protects his turf and tells Riedelsheimer, "I don't want them to play at being artists." Yet when Goldsworthy later throws handfuls of snow upwards into the wind, creating a fleeting shimmer caught in the low sun of late afternoon against a black forest backdrop, Riedelsheimer captures the underlying impulse of artmaking as unadulterated play. 94m.

"Rivers and Tides" opens Friday at Landmark Century.

(2003-03-12)

Also by Bill Stamets

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