Passersby often miss it entirely: a winding, 445-foot-long wall rising from a broad trough, just northeast of the Cantor Arts Center. It calls to mind an archaeological excavation, the artist’s nod to the stones’ earthly origin. It seems to emerge from the ground, then disappear back into it.
In August 2001, the world-renowned environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, along with eight stonemasons from Cumbria, England, near his native Cheshire, broke ground on the sculpture. It would be built from sandstone salvaged from university buildings destroyed in the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes.
Goldsworthy kept a diary during the 3½ weeks of construction, in which he revealed bits of his vision: “My intention is to try and make a work that makes it look as if it has been here before the trees grew.”
The artist had “bones” to pick.
Invited to build the sculpture in honor of former Stanford president Gerhard Casper, Goldsworthy traveled to campus about a year before construction began, first studying the history of Stanford, and then planning the project. He helped choose the inconspicuous spot for the sculpture and, upon learning about the “boneyard” of broken sandstone off Page Mill Road, went to dig through the mounds. (Some is still stored there today.) The artist and his masons eventually used 6,500 stones, weighing a collective 128 tons. “It was the rubble that the university said he could bring back to life,” says Charles Junkerman, a former associate provost and dean of continuing studies. “Andy described how he thought of Stone River as taking the sandstone, its geological and architectural history, and bringing it back into the flow of life. Part of the imagery of the river, he said, is it’s always underway, always changing, in flux.”
Building it was a handful.
A nearby plaque tells how the stonemasons worked 11 hours a day, six days a week, to complete the project. These artisans, some of whom were also sheep farmers back home, cut 700 triangular stones to fit along the sculpture’s spine while sweating in the unfamiliar California heat. Anxious to see all his planning come to fruition, Goldsworthy came and went, fidgeting as he watched the work from a nearby grove of trees. “I’d go out there and find Andy weaving together leaves hanging from the trees,” says Thomas Seligman, ’65, Cantor’s first full-time director. “Those of us who are artists—we have to use our hands.”
At least this one can’t melt.
In his diary, Goldsworthy reveals himself as a driven artist, bent on keeping on schedule, frustrated by any roadblocks, financial or illness-related. “It is frustratingly slow for me at this point and the tension of waiting to see how the sculpture will resolve itself is almost unbearable,” he writes on August 7, just a day after construction began. “There is a tension in aiming for, but not achieving perfection,” he writes. For Seligman, though, Goldsworthy appeared “chill and thoughtful,” especially for an artist of international stature.
“There are other environmental artists, but he is pretty unique,” Seligman says. “His work can be ephemeral. He’s worked with ice and snow. He’s worked with mud.” Another of Goldsworthy’s works is at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It’s a man-made crack, about a quarter-inch wide, running through the courtyard. There, too, many visitors miss it.
Its story comes full circle.
On August 29, the stone wallers succeeded, surviving the unusual heat and the deadline pressure. Goldsworthy, who was pleased with the outcome, described in his diary that day how the sculpture tells the story that he wanted to tell—how sand that rivers scoured out of the Sierra Nevada became stone, which became buildings, and then fell back to earth, were reborn as Stone River and will, once again, change and transform. “My use of the stone has in some ways returned the stone to the earth—another leg of its journey,” he writes.
It’s the strong, silent type.
Over the years, there’s been little promotion for the sculpture at Stanford, says Seligman. It exists quietly for people to happen upon. “You kind of have to know about it,” he says. “I have a glimmer in my head that Andy was kind of saying, ‘Let’s just let it be discovered rather than beat the drums.’ That’s Andy’s style. People wandering around the campus will come upon it, or not, and that’s OK.”
Tracie White is a senior writer at Stanford. Email her at traciew@stanford.edu.
