Time

Whether measured in minutes or eons, time is a good friend of British artist Andy Goldsworthy's. He spends long, solitary days outdoors in all kinds of weather, doing things like piecing together many, many yellow leaves to create a brilliant band of color at a river's edge in upstate New York or stacking small pieces of ice on the Nova Scotia coast to build a sculpture in the compact shape of an ancient stone monument. Threatened by a strong gust of wind, the incoming tide, or a sudden rise in temperature, these are fugitive works comfortably in synch with the natural rhythms of growth and decay.

Other works of his are longer-lasting. In walls made of stacked stones with hollowed-out oval "chambers" the size of his body--which he began building in 1999 in Lancashire, England--Goldsworthy makes reference not only to the shapes of graves in a nearby church but also to his personal history in the region and the enduring qualities of a rugged landscape.

Goldsworthy is the rare artist who can describe what he does in simple, concrete terms that nonetheless reveal his larger vision. Time is a very satisfying collection of 500 photographs, nearly all taken by him, that document the creation and subsequent mutations of his work. These evocative images are illuminated by excerpts from the diaries he kept as he created five projects in Europe and North America in the '90s. He discusses what it's like to explore an unfamiliar landscape, assess how the elements will work for and against him, and perform what are essentially a set of experiments. Success means making work that is, as he writes, "completely welded to its site." --Cathy Curtis