MAN CREATES, NATURE WRECKS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

SCOTTISH ARTIST Andy Goldsworthy makes the environmental art equivalent of sand castles. The reason you're probably unfamiliar with his work is that it doesn't last very long.

``Rivers and Tides,'' whose subtitle is ``Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time,'' aims to remedy that. An occasionally enthralling documentary by Germany's Thomas Riedelsheimer, the film charts about a year's worth of the middle-age artist's globe-trotting labors.

Goldsworthy's medium is natural objects found in the vicinity of wherever he puts together his delicate, often ephemeral installations. Thus, driftwood domes along coastal shores, raw sheep wool matting atop British country fences, etc. For the most part, though not always, his stone and twig sculptures, floating leaf assemblages, ground dye splashes and the like are meant to be altered, then erased, by wind and tides and other forces of nature. Seeing these constructs collapse, often in wonderful, snakelike patterns, is arguably a more rewarding aesthetic experience than watching Goldsworthy's painstaking (and often frustrated) efforts to create the pieces in the first place.

There is some greenish philosophy behind the artist's more-or-less quixotic endeavors. It's about being attuned to the rhythms and patterns of the environment, if it must be boiled down to a simple explanation. Goldsworthy's ingenuity and vision, however, are interesting enough to cancel out the need for any interpretation.

While the artist himself is generally low-key, he can get cranky when the fourth-dimensional pressure is on. Desperate to construct one of his rock hives before the tide comes in on a Nova Scotia beach, Goldsworthy snaps at a cameraman, ``Stop filming and collect stones instead - do something useful!'' We get some glimpses of life at home - he's got a passel of young kids in a picturesque Lowlands hamlet - but little insight into his feelings about them, their mother or anything else outside of his art.

But ``Rivers and Tides'' does enough just by showing that Goldsworthy is among us. He's a creative force whose work you just don't want to miss knowing about, even if he makes catching up with it on the hoof next to impossible.

RIVERS AND TIDES - Three stars

(Not rated)

Starring: Andy Goldsworthy.

Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Intriguing and beautiful documentary about the Scottish artist whose environmental sculptures are designed to be changed, eroded and often erased by natural forces.

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Artist Andrew Goldsworthy specializes in creating environmental art that slowly changes due to nature's whim.