Sculptures created from found materials like ice and thorns

Hear, O listener of the living world, the profound reflection of Simon Schama, historian and keeper of culture’s memory, who spoke these words: “Sculptures created from found materials like ice and thorns, driftwood, and even bleached kangaroo bones all presuppose that artistic design will yield to the cycles of time and climate, whether over an hour or a decade.” In these words lies a meditation on the impermanence of beauty, the humility of creation, and the eternal dance between art and nature. Schama, a scholar of history and art, reminds us that not all masterpieces are meant to last — some are born only to return to dust, to melt back into the elements from which they came.

The origin of this quote springs from Schama’s lifelong contemplation of art as a mirror of the human condition. Known for his monumental works on history and culture, such as Landscape and Memory and The Power of Art, Schama explores how the artist’s hand, no matter how skilled, is ultimately subject to the forces of time. His observation speaks to the modern artists who craft from ephemeral materials — sculptors who shape from ice, sand, wood, or bone — knowing that the wind, the sun, or the sea will one day reclaim their work. In this surrender lies not defeat, but wisdom: the understanding that art is not immortal, but alive, part of the same cycle that governs all living things.

The ancients knew this truth well. When the desert winds buried the cities of Mesopotamia and the rains eroded the temples of the Maya, the wise did not curse the decay — they saw in it the hand of time, the sacred reminder that even greatness must yield to nature’s rhythm. In Japan, this principle is enshrined in the practice of wabi-sabi, the reverence for transience and imperfection. A cracked bowl, a fading flower, a sculpture carved from snow — these are not failures of endurance, but expressions of life’s passing beauty. Schama’s words echo this same reverence: that to create something meant to vanish is to honor the fleeting miracle of existence itself.

Consider, if you will, the story of Andy Goldsworthy, the artist of nature’s breath. He works with the earth itself — shaping spirals of leaves, walls of stone, arches of ice that gleam beneath the morning sun. And when the wind scatters the leaves or the thaw dissolves the ice, he does not mourn. He stands silently, watching his creation return to the wild. For him, as for Schama, the power of art lies not in permanence but in participation — a conversation with nature, a yielding to forces greater than oneself. Each sculpture, by being reclaimed, becomes more honest, more profound. It teaches that beauty is not ownership, but relationship.

Thus, Schama’s insight reveals a deeper lesson: to live as an artist is to accept impermanence. We, too, are sculptures of time — our bodies made of dust, our stories carved from moments that fade. Yet we build, we love, we create, knowing all will pass. This is not futility; it is devotion. To live with awareness of transience is to live with deeper gratitude, to cherish the present not because it will last, but because it will not. Like the sculptor with his driftwood and ice, we must learn to release control, to yield with grace to the turning of the seasons.

The ancients might have called this the wisdom of surrender — the understanding that creation and decay are not enemies but companions. For even as art fades, it gives birth to memory, to transformation, to renewal. The ice that melts nourishes the stream; the driftwood that crumbles feeds the soil. So too do our own labors and dreams ripple onward in unseen ways. What we do, what we love, what we make — though impermanent — contributes to the endless cycle of creation.

So take this teaching into your heart, O builder of days: create anyway. Even knowing that your work may fade, build with courage and love. Speak your truth though the wind may carry it away. Plant your seeds though the rain may drown them, for each act of creation is sacred, no matter how brief its life. When you make something that yields to time, you do not lose it — you give it back to the world that made you.

And when you, too, are reclaimed by time, may it be said of you what Schama said of those who work with the transient: that you lived and created in harmony with the cycles of existence, knowing that beauty lies not in what endures, but in what blooms, fades, and returns to the eternal rhythm of the earth. For this is the artist’s truest legacy — not permanence, but participation in the endless song of creation.