"Stone River" by Andy Goldworthy

If you could take just one photo: Children play in Stone River's bends

Stone River, an environmental art installation by famed artist, Andy Goldsworthy, is easily overlooked on a visit to the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University. In 2001, Goldsworthy and a team of stoneworkers labored eleven hours a day, six days a week, for a duration of three and half weeks, laying sand stones left behind after the extensive damage to university buildings during the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes. Stone River is nestled below eye level in a trough amongst the California oaks and wild grasses with the intention that the land, over time, will take it back. Animals will find homes in the site, and ultimately, the stones will travel full circle and return to the earth in their original state. Philosophically, Goldsworthy’s work considers these ephemeral qualities of life – change, growth, decay, and flow of movement. A visit to Stone River where children weave in and out between its snake-like undulations, challenges us to find movement and change in our own lives, to push our selves to teeter off balance, and in that delicate moment, at the edge of collapse, to find new insights.

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