World-renowned British artist Andy Goldsworthy selects natural materials including rocks, leaves and sticks to create his land art sculptures. He typically video records the process and photographs the final pieces. Then, he intentionally leaves the installations to be integrated gradually into their surroundings through natural erosion.

Sharing a documentary of Goldsworthy’s work, “Rivers and Tides” for inspiration, Montgomery County Community College Art Assistant Professor Michael Connelly recently gave an assignment to students in his Ceramics courses to create their own installations using natural materials.

Connelly timed the project to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 20, and it was the final project for the classes, which transitioned from on-campus to online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Students who take Ceramics at the College love to get their hands dirty,” said Connelly, noting that students not only work with clay but also learn about its history, particularly local history. “Essentially clay is found everywhere. Students can see the red clay material surface after a big rainstorm as it erodes the ground into the water.”

While students did not need to make their own clay unless they wanted to, they were able to use natural objects they found outside, keeping in mind how Goldsworthy used such materials to create lines and shapes. During their explorations, students looked for examples of radial, symmetrical and asymmetrical balance and used contrasting colors or value to direct the viewer’s eye around the shape of the artwork.

As part of the assignment, students wrote brief reflection essays about their projects and the creative process.

Nursing student, Rachel Michalak, of Harleysville, found her inspiration and materials while walking with her family along a creek behind her home. Taking several pinecones, she interlocked their scales together and added violets, which have similarly shaped petals, and contrasting yellow flowers to enhance the piece further.

For her second project, she picked a variety of flowers and sorted them by type and color. Using her daughter’s diving pool toys for a frame, she arranged the flowers in a circular pattern in the freshly cut grass in her yard. She left both projects in her yard, where the wind and rain eventually washed the petals into the grass.

“Goldsworthy’s work definitely made me think more about nature and what materials I would be able to use,” she said, noting that she took Ceramics classes because they are enjoyable and relaxing, and because “Professor Connelly is an awesome teacher.”

Another student, Kosrow Nowroozi, of Huntingdon Valley, decided to make a clay sculpture of the coronavirus and incorporate natural items.

“Since we all are in the battle with this devastating COVID-19, I was going to make this unusual historical occasion be remembered by a work representative of our situation. I was going to depict the coronavirus using natural resources. If you look at the coronavirus under an electron microscope, you’ll see how colorful it looks, although it has extremely ugly and devastating effects on humans and humanity,” said Nowroozi, who is a retired reproductive surgeon.

Since 2012, he says he has taken more than 70 courses, including Ceramics, at MCCC because he wants to “learn one new thing every day.”

To create the coronavirus, he used a soccer ball, applying clay around it to make two halves that he fused together forming the base. He initially applied pink flowers but then replaced them with textured seedpods to resemble the corona.

“It didn’t look like the coronavirus with the flowers – people thought it was a bouquet of flowers, so I replaced them with the spiky seedpods,” Nowroozi said. “I left the project outside as part of nature as Andy Goldsworthy does, so it’s starting to crack with the temperature changes.”

In his reflective paper, Nowroozi noted, “I have learned from his (Goldsworthy’s) work that in arts, sometimes things will not follow your plans and thoughts. The artist should have an open mind whenever his/her plan is not going the way he/she was expecting to see, he or she should rethink and start again with a different plan to achieve the original work.”

Nursing student, Thomas Bechtel, of Oreland, liked how Goldsworthy used bark, twigs, rocks and logs, and he emulated similar installations. Bechtel started some of his projects by drawing a circle in the ground and filling it in with sticks and adding flowers for shape and color.

“I think his (Goldsworthy’s) artwork is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It grabs my attention in that he takes ordinary objects in the woods and make something amazing out of it,” Bechtel said. “What I liked about the project was I was able to use wood and bark and make something that Goldsworthy made on a smaller scale.”

After viewing the documentary, Jared Albany, of Ambler, was intrigued with how Goldsworthy used balance in his projects, and he decided he wanted to create a stone arch.

"My objective was to balance rocks in a way to leave an obvious arch. I did not want them to be glued or stuck together but only use the friction off each other for it to stay up. After taking some pictures, I would leave it to fall on its own,” said Albany, who is a Fine Arts student majoring in Animation.

“Balancing rocks is hard. I lost track of time when I was in the middle of the project, but it took about an hour to figure out which rocks would be good, where to put them and how to balance them. It was all trial and error just to get them to stay, but at some point, I was able to let go and have it stand,” he said.

Connelly is impressed with the students’ installations and reflective essays as well as how they have embraced the assignment.

“I feel the written descriptions are incredibly poetic, as are the earthworks,” he said.

In 2006 while Connelly was an Artist in Residence at the Anderson Arts Ranch Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado, he worked at the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colorado. At the museum, he had the privilege of assisting Goldsworthy with his installation, “Stone Work in America.” For the project, they used clay shipped from England and packed it around large local rocks and small boulders in the gallery. As part of the process, the clay eventually cracked and fell off the rocks when the water naturally evaporated from the clay.

“It was wonderful to take part in that process,” said Connelly, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Alfred University in Alfred, New York, and lived in Vermont for five years before moving to Pennsylvania to teach at MCCC. “I have always been enamored by the utility of dry-stacked stone walls of New England which were built by farmers as they moved the soil and stacked the rocks on the property lines. The rocks dramatically eroded, grew lichen and ivy and changed over a few centuries from New England’s harsh weather conditions. I would walk these walls and imagine the overall process.”

With this creative assignment, Connelly’s students now have a new perspective of the natural world around them and the potential art that exists in nature.

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By Miljana Vukoslavovic