Land Art for Hope

Blood is humming us / A constant tone accompanying the incessant muscling / Pumping us in out, in out, in out, in out, in out, in out (Esperanza Spalding, "Lest We Forget")

Here is me delirious again: Life is good and today’s thanks goes to everything the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy does for us and step by step Esperanza Spalding, dosing her medicine sensibly, handing you “Lest We Forget” for your daily so high-so deep; fabulous video to go with a song that turns me all mobius and lemniscate inside (so I can’t do both at the same time: watch and listen, but I got there in the end after half an hour of this tantric ^{[and triune, catch that beat]} breathing exercise).

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^{Stacked ice, sound of cracking... Hampstead Heath, London 28 December, 1985 | Ice, each piece frozen to the next, Scaur water, Penpont, Dumfriesshire , 1987 | Bamboo spires, 1987 | Horse chestnut patch, green to yellow, torn leaves, with spit, Yorkshire Sculpture Park , 1987| Beach cairn | Rowan leaves laid around a hole...Yorkshire Sculpture Park,, 1987 | Iris blade, 1997–1997 | Rock arch, 1993–1993 | Sycamore leaves stitched together with stalks hung from a still green oak, 1987–1987|}

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Esperanza

does her name total justice. She is one of those personifications of the rhythm it takes to keep on walking into life on spirit for soles. Her work complements that of Andy; both are called to witness the river of time. We directly experience it in our body is what the album "12 Little Spells" reminds us to do. This album is one of those complete works of sequencing and not a collection of loose melodies (so, take out that hour....although, truth be told, my first listening had to be split up over several days, since I found myself taken too far and wide by some of the tracks, needing me to recover overnight before I could continue).

Andy

works to find the flow that keeps water and land equally as manifest as in flux. He works every god-given day to follow the patterns nature keeps time with, infusing nature's cycles in return with his god-making creativity, extending nature man’s blessing, lending man new direction.

^{Ice sculpture made on Nova Scotia taken from the video “Rivers and Tides”, which documents Andy Goldsworthy at work. The way it lit up golden against the black rock came as a special reward and surprise for Andy, ony having flown in to the place shortly before, leaving him fairly unfamiliar with these specific surroundings.}

Andy’s compositions

constructed from the natural materials lying around him in nature, echo intensely the rhythm of the landscape. He is drawn to work where these rhythms most clearly embed their patterns for him. The art's magical touch is literally his act of conjuring up the work out of the surrounding environment; and this under a time-constraint. He has to beat tides, or the fall of night, or the elements of weather. Not every attempt is successful (the video shows), revealing how Nature sometimes gives up her construction secrets (rhythm consolidated) very slowly. Each work has its point of maximum growth, but as an art piece it is only completed/finished once the work begins to dissolve back into its original components as effected by fairly imminent or impromptu shifts in the conditions of the location. These are caused by a regular (and recurring) progress in time (like tides or winds or the melting sun; or even longer lines ruling decay and erosion).

Made for a Cosmic Viewer

The photographs as such barely serve the work, and merely function as marks in time and location. This artist exemplifies the artist of the future, if you ask me. He travels round to specific natural areas that seem to invite a dialogue with man, as if the land is ready to absorb some of man’s creative Consciousness. Elsewhere in my Steem Gesamtwerk I have already spoken of Pogacnik†, who is more consciously making healing sigils which aim to alter the (low/sick) frequencies of a place for the better; (he calls it, like I would, Third Art).

Only with artistic intent will we truly be able to solve the mess that is threatening to curb our free state and optimal potential. It takes an understanding of the patterns of time. If we work holistically and selflessly for once, we get to infuse Nature with our spirit in return for all she has done for us. This is the kind of healing I am holding out for this planet. If we change our will to align with cosmic timing, who knows what inventions we might unearth yet (already lying in wait like Leonardo's flying machine couched in aerodynamics).

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^Footnote

† Improve your Slovenian here or click on his name to find more information on Marko Pogačnik on his own website.