Touching the Heart of the Place - Matt Karlsen, 2005
Matt was our English High School teacher during the school year 2004-2005

Over the last two years, I’ve had the good fortune to explore Andy Goldsworthy’s work with young people. Their reactions to his work tend toward the enthusiastic – whether they are high school students here in Monteverde, Costa Rica; or the 2nd and 3rd graders and middle school students who collaborated on a similar project with me in Portland, Oregon; or, for that matter, my four year-old son and seven year-old daughter. Each time I do this work, I understand a little better the reasons why it is so successful, as well as the important role I’ve come to believe it should play in environmental education.

Andy Goldsworthy is the best known of a group of contemporary artists loosely affiliated in a movement alternately known as “Environmental Art,” “Eco-Art,” or “Earth Art.” His sculptures are most frequently created in wild settings using the materials present at the site, although there are many exceptions to this generalization. His work stands apart from the art most young people – and their teachers and parents as well – are commonly exposed to. His intention is “to touch the heart of the place;” “to see something that was always there but that you were blind to;” and to understand the materials with which he is working – to see, for example, the seed within the stone. His art is known to the world through photographs and the film Rivers and Tides: Working with Time.

The primary reason I view this work as important is the extent to which it calls the student/artist to collaborate with the natural world. This conversation between individual and nature is different from the relationship with land present in other – equally valid – traditional tasks in environmental education. In reforestation, the student acts upon the land, shoveling, weeding, and planting. In analysis and inventory, the student’s role is more that of detached observer or worker. Here, students found neither mastery over the land nor a viewpoint from a distance: they spoke of a sense of integration. Johannes, a seventh grader, wrote, “I think that when we go to the forest and do this kind of art, (it doesn’t) feel like nature and us: we feel like one.” Ninth grader Stephanie, on a similar note, said, “When we do this art, we are a part of nature: we are touching nature, connecting with it. It’s important to have that connection.” Jose Pablo, eighth grader, said, “I think that our work is really environmental education, because we’re doing things that are with the environment, making me feel like a part of it, like another piece in the puzzle of nature.” I think that is what led eighth grader Jordan to refer to Goldsworthy’s art as “spiritual.” These comments from Costa Rica echo those of students I worked with in Portland last year. Second grader Nat felt communion with the place: “I’m actually feeling the water falling down- the whole idea of flowing going flowing going.” Zoe, an eighth grader, wrote, “It felt great to create this kind of work. It was a wonderful way to commune with nature and create a piece to honor the Earth.”

Why the importance of that connection? Typically, environmental education has focused in the primary grades on that sense of love for place, emphasizing “special spots” or “favorite trees.” At the older grades, we acknowledge students ability to think abstractly and generalize, so we challenge them to consider questions on a more global scale. The enthusiasm with which the students I worked with have taken on this “Environmental Art” work suggests a yearning for that more primal connection.

One reason why students are able to achieve that more primal connection is because they are interfacing with their environment using the language of visual art. Art presents the opportunity to see old surroundings in a new way, provoking a sense of wonder. Ninth grader Evert wrote, “I was blind to working in a river to create something… I only saw the river to swim and not to create.” The power of art in presenting a new lens with which to see the world is reflected in the comments of Melissa, one of Evert’s classmates: “Nature makes good art without help. Andy’s art is similar to the art nature does but smaller. Nature does huge art like mountains, waterfalls, and more.” Scarleth, an eighth grader, compares this activity to others: “I think this (is) environmental education because when you work in EE you are trying to help nature, like reforestation, and when you are working with art in nature, nature is trying to help you see the things that are beautiful in nature.” Part of this is necessitated by trying to create art outside the traditional art studio. In Rivers and Tides, Goldsworthy refers to this: “There was a sense of energy, breathlessness and uncertainty once you were out of the college: taut control can be the death of a work.” In describing her efforts, eighth grader Aurora embraces that: “I think that we really did touch the heart of the place. When I hung leaves from a tree, the wind was very strong and so all of the leaves were blowing around and that is what made it so beautiful. If I had done that somewhere else it would have been a completely different piece. The wind wouldn’t have been the main factor; it could have been the color of the leaves that made it unique.”

That sense of presence, of slow, unmediated experience, is increasingly rare in people’s lives - even in the lives of Monteverde’s youth. The internet, television, cell phones and video games dominate students’ lives outside of school, and the pace of their educational experience is propelled relentlessly by national exams. Students expect things to happen fast, and the natural world will never answer that demand. If we’re going to be successful as environmental educators, we need to find satisfying ways to slow students down. This work is a great teacher in that respect. In Rivers & Tides, we watch Goldsworthy’s projects collapse in the middle of creation repeatedly and see him respond as a reflective practitioner aware of the growth that these “failures” promoted. In creating this art myself, I often felt the urge to speed the creation process, but never successfully – I could only move as fast as the materials allowed. Eighth grader Ana Gabriela describes such an experience: “We had an idea. We started putting leaves by color, but we didn’t know how to connect them together, because we wanted it to be hanging from a tree. At first it fell down like three times, but at the end when at last we had it for one moment without falling down it was a very beautiful moment.”

It’s that quality of this art – “ephemeral,” to use intern Kevin Reilly’s description – that resonates yet another critical chord for the students. This ephemeral quality prevents the art from ever becoming a relic – most pieces are gone when we return the next day. Again, this emphasis on process over product, on identifying the unique quality of the moment, is another important aspect of environmental education. Most “product” of any land stewardship we do will not be revealed over a unit of study – often, it won’t be revealed in our lifetimes.

If, through this work, students gain a new appreciation for the possibilities present in their relationship with the natural world, then I think a critical environmental education goal has been achieved. Through valuing the vibrant potential of a living place at a unique moment, they’ve increased their stake in protecting