Environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England. Since 1986, he has lived in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. He studied at Bradford Art College and Preston Polytechnic. He has traveled the world, including the North Pole, Australian outback, the United States and Japan, experimenting with the differing climates and materials. Unlike artists for thousands of years seeking to make art that will survive, Goldsworthy, like many contemporary artists, thinks of his work as temporary.

Upon completion of a work, he will take a photograph of it as documentation. His apparent purpose is to understand nature by using it as the material of his art, whether twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns.

Golds...