Environmental sculptor Andy Goldsworthy gives public talk Dec. 4

Environmental sculptor Andy Goldsworthy will present a public lecture "Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time," Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the David Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall on campus.

The lecture will include a screening of Goldsworthy's film by the same name, and a question and answer session with audience members will follow. The event is free and open to the public. However, tickets are required, with a limit of two per person. Tickets will be available starting Monday, Dec. 2, at the Willard Straight Hall ticket office, on campus, and at the Clinton House box office in downtown Ithaca.

Goldsworthy, an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell, is a British environmental sculptor whose art is characterized by spare, simple shapes arranged from natural materials such as leaves, stones, water or sticks. Preferring to create his art in privacy rather than staging a public performance, Goldsworthy is known for creating sculptures of extraordinary beauty and then photographing his works before they decay or are dismantled.

The artist, who lives in Scotland, has created site installations in Britain, Japan, Alaska and Ithaca, among other places. Most of his works, aside from his stone walls, are ephemeral; addressing issues of growth and decay, seasonal cycles and the idea that an artwork, too, has a naturally limited life span.

Goldsworthy has authored several popular coffee table-sized photography books that chronicle his work, including: Time, A Collaboration with Nature, and Stone.

In October 1999, with sponsorship from Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Goldsworthy worked in the Fall Creek gorge on Cornell's campus and presented the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust lecture. In March 2000, he returned to Cornell to create an installation piece in the Johnson Museum that included an exhibition of the photographs of the outdoor pieces he created the previous October.

To view some of Goldsworthy's work, visit the following web site: http://www.hainesgallery.com/AG.work.html.

The Program for Professors-at-Large began in 1965 to bring distinguished scholars to the Cornell campus for formal and informal exchanges with faculty and students. Up to 20 professors-at-large are named at Cornell at any one time. They make periodic visits to campus over six-year terms and are considered full members of the Cornell faculty.

For more information about Goldsworthy's visit or the professors-at-large program, contact Gerri Jones at 255-0832, e-mail her gaj1@cornell.edu or visit the program's web site at www.cornell.edu/Academic/Professors-at-Large/.