One of Patrick Dougherty’s many fascinating “Stickwork” sculptures, “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” (www.ibiblio.org/stabley/dougherty/press_kit/)
Story by Ted Hartzell, Fernwood Botanical Garden
(Click photos to enlarge)
There’s something that humans love about sticks. Patrick Dougherty loves them so much that the 69-year-old sculptor has made it his life’s work to go around the world building monumental, flowing sculptures made of saplings and branches.
“Picking up a stick and bending it seems to give me big ideas,” he says. Huge, leaning bottles of stick-made Bordeaux or huge circles
Patrick Dougherty
spinning through a row of trees are examples of his big-stick ideas.
In early April Dougherty will set up shop for three weeks at Fernwood Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve in Niles, MI. Unlike more reclusive artists, the Chapel Hill, N.C., resident welcomes spectators and conversations with them.
As he has done in more than 230 places ranging from downtown Melbourne, Australia, to a small college in Minnesota, Dougherty will work with dozens of volunteers during his stay. He and his assistants, led by Rick Tuttle of Three Oaks, MI, will spend roughly the first week gathering willow saplings. By the weekend of April 5-6 he expects they will start fashioning a creation that will probably be 20 to 24 feet tall and perhaps cover a 30-by-30-foot space on the ground.
“Generally I try to make something that’s grand,” Dougherty says.
Grand will be good for Fernwood, which is celebrating its 50th year on its 105-acre site along the St. Joseph River.
What will Dougherty design at Fernwood? He won’t know until he’s there and is drawing inspiration from the place and the people.
Dougherty says his creations don’t last long. They enjoy their “teenage years” and “dating” and winning new friends, but by about the 2-year mark their lines begin to droop. Left to itself, a sculpture ultimately becomes “just an unnoticed heap of sticks,” he says. His contract with Fernwood calls for it “to ensure that the sculpture is removed at the appropriate time.”
Dougherty has a kindred spirit in Tuttle, who will fill the role of Dougherty’s No. 1 assistant at Fernwood. Like Dougherty, Tuttle is fond of building things. He is an artist who works in materials ranging from oil paint to leather (bookbinding) to wood (furniture and assemblage). Tuttle worked in graphic arts in Chicago and moved to Three Oaks about 20 years ago. He runs a small space called The Conversation: at Edington Gallery and built the Three Oaks Community Garden, including its garden house. He and his wife, Barbara Presti, operate Treeline Farms.
Fernwood is located 20 miles north of the University of Notre Dame, off Exit 7 of U.S. 31.
For more information, visit www.fernwoodbotanical.org and www.stickwork.net.