Patrick Doughtery is an amazing artist. I happened to stumble upon his name while searching for a new project idea, and i’m very glad i did. He works with sticks. Sound simple enough? Currently I am trying to build a project similar to his and it’s not as easy as it looks.

Dougherty was born 1945 in Oklahoma but was raised in North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1967 with a Bachelors in English, he also earned a Masters in Hospital and Health from Iowa in ’69. He than later went back to North Carolina andt that is where he studied art history and sculpture. (http://www.stickwork.net/bio/)

Patrick has always had a love for carpentry, he then used those skills along with his love of nature and started working with baby trees (saplings). Above is his very first Land Art work, called Maple Body Wrap, in 1982. That was the start of something monumental. After this work, his pieces turned from single pieces to huge large sacaled environmental works. The rest of the projects required trucks and trucks of saplings. SOME of the twigs are shown below. As i’m working on my project, the amount of twigs shown below would maybe construct half of one of his “huts”. The works hes done are no less than impressive, to say the least.

He, so far, has built over 230 of these stick sculptures worldwide; from Japan to Brussels and all over the United States. Each one takes roughly three weeks to do, keep in mind he uses several volunteers who work hours on end. 

(Above) Doughtery is so involved with his works, he actually bought property in North Carolina and constructed his home out of organic materials; rocks, saplings of course, anything that he could find on site. He is still living their with his wife and son with a couple of additions and changes.  ” My dream was to build a house- I didn’t realize my real dream was to become a sculptor.”

“Running in Circles”, pictured Above  was inspired by the wind, the sweeping and flowing of the scultpure. The huge circles in between are there to provide not just a cool sculpture but a view of the ocean on the other side. This work in particular provides resting places for the visiters. Doughtery also took the local animals into consideration and used this work to provide a home for them, of course until the sculpture eventually fell or deteriated and returned to it’s home, the earth.

He has received numerous awards, including the 2011 Factor Prize for Southern Art, North Carolina Artist Fellowship Award, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, Japan-US Creative Arts Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Princeton Architectural Press published a major book about Patrick and his work in 2009. (www.stickworks.net)

Patrick Doughtery’s work takes alot of time and preperation. He uses hundreds of saplings to make each piece, and it takes a solid three weeks or more to make them. Many people travel just to see them. And they soon fall and go back to the ground where they once came from. They are carefully intertwined with each other and each little part of the whole structure is amazing to look at. I hope he comes to Tennessee soon, I would love to see one of his works in person. He continues to make these sculptures all around the world, continuing to inspire people.. including me. If you get the chance look up some of his videos, it is truly amazing.

“Empty Kingdom”

“Lyrical Forms”

Patrick Doughtery himself, hard at work.

“Nine Lives”

“The Summer Palace”

“The Bedazzler”