We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.
Generally in New York, people just walk over you with no problem about that. Other countries, people want to resuscitate you, like, after a bit.
I’m very fortunate to be able to do what I do and live the way I do.
The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.
People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement.
Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.
My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds – what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.
Ideas must be put to the test. That’s why we make things; otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realization. I’ve had what I thought were great ideas that just didn’t work.
The things that I make are that which a person will make. They’re not meant to mimic nature. They are nothing but the result of a hand of a person.
In contact with materials, I can see so much more with my hands than I can just with my eyes. I’m a participant, not a spectator. I see myself both as an object and a material, and the human presence is really important to the landscapes in which I work.
Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them.
Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
It’s just that when I work on someone else’s land, it makes me aware of the social nature of that landscape.
I think that any sculpture is a response to its environment. It can be brought to life or put to sleep by the environment.
There is life in a stone. Any stone that sits in a field or lies on a beach takes on the memory of that place. You can feel that stones have witnessed so many things.
As with all my work, whether it’s a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I’m trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.
I’ve laid down in dried up streambeds, leaving a shadow. And then, five minutes later, it’s flash flooded, and where I once laid is now running water, which would’ve washed me away, you know? There’s that power and danger often in places that look so calm and pastoral to begin with.