Andy Goldsworthy spent the week of April 14-18 creating an original piece of art for Cornell. But his latest piece won't appear at the Johnson Museum – or indoors, for that matter. The roughly egg-shaped structure of local Llenroc stone, balanced by its own intricate design, is located in a nearby forest.

"I call these cairns – piles of sticks and stones that used to be placed on paths to show the way in snow," Goldsworthy said of this recurring figure in his work. "They become like journey markers for me."

Goldsworthy, who delivered the last address of his eight-year term as an A.D. White Professor-At-Large on April 18 in Call Auditorium, has become renowned for using natural materials to create striking images and unusual structures. While his works are eye-catching, Goldsworthy urges viewers to look beneath the surface and to notice the internal structures in his work, the interplay of natural objects and the energy of the materials used.

Most important to each work is the setting in which it is placed. Goldsworthy develops each new design based on the location he chooses and the objects that are readily available on-site to be used in the project.

Color and structure are particularly important to him, too, but not as decorative tools. Color is used to express the "life and energy contained within the material," while structure represents "the systems that occur within a sculpture," he said.

Much of Goldsworthy's work isn't intended to remain in the form that he creates, and some pieces aren't intended to last at all. He once covered an entire room in clay that slowly cracked to create a deteriorating scene. He used a rock in an Ithaca gorge as a canvas for a water drawing that evaporated as fast as he drew it. He also built a cairn similar to his Cornell endeavor on a beach at low tide, only to watch it come undone as the tide returned.

"The way a work changes after I make it is as important as the making," Goldsworthy said. "When I invest all this time into a piece of work, there is a sense of loss when it is destroyed or decays. But we all must deal with loss."

Over his eight-year relationship with Cornell, Goldsworthy has accepted many students to join his team, which also includes professional stonemasons. While ideas for the projects come from Goldsworthy, much of the labor to create them comes from his team. "My purpose [in my projects] is to extract a lot of the effort out of the sculpture," says Goldsworthy. "When it's done it should seem effortless. But these students who have worked with me have put a tremendous amount of effort into these projects."

As his talk concluded, Goldsworthy gave one last message to his students: "You're all in my work. It might not be readily apparent in the surface, but if you look deep enough, you're all in there."

Julia Langer '08 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.