The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Dream weaver
Artist’s walk-through ‘Stickwork’ sculpture at Holden Arboretum recalls childhood play
A towering construction made from willow branches large and small is nearing completion on a knoll just beyond the Wildflower Garden at Holden Arboretum. Woven of sticks and sturdier than they at first appear, its walls curve and swoop to embrace several courtyards connected by passageways and mazes within it.
An installation in an artist’s ongoing series called “Stickwork,” it’s made to be walked through, explored and peered out of when it opens on Aug. 29.
“It’s built to handle snowfall in the winter,” explains Patrick Dougherty, the North Carolina-based sculpture artist whose vision is being realized on that knoll.
His son, Sam, assists him along with a handful of volunteers who toil with hand pruners to cut, wind, bend and tuck variously sized willow branches to shape windows, doorways, walls and passages.
He names each “Stickwork” sculpture as it takes shape and assumes its own identity.
“Tilt-a-Whirl” — his creation at Holden — brings to mind childhood hideouts to which my friends and I would escape, embellishing them with vines, branches and twigs.
“People, especially children, in every culture play with sticks,” Dougherty says. “For me, it’s sculpture.”
Dougherty, 75, worked for years in hospital and health administration until returning to school for an art degree in the early 1980s. Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, he began to learn more about primitive techniques of building, and he experimented with tree saplings as construction material. In 1982, his first work, “Maple Body Wrap,” was included in the “North Carolina Biennial Artists’ Exhibition,” sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of Art.
His monumental ‘Stickwork’ sculptures, now numbering more than 300, are found throughout the country and in several European and Asian nations, where those who visit them return again and again to explore the intricacies awaiting discovery in its nooks
and crannies. This is his 311th stickwork sculpture.
Dougherty’s muse is the landscape, and he takes his cues not only from the surroundings but from the feel of the place in which he is working. A look at his website, reveals that each one of his creations is different. Visit stickwork.net.
When it’s done, this creation will have taken 17 days, with Dougherty and his crew working on it eight hours each day.
Sam, working high on scaffolding, twists and braids willow branches into an edging for the tops of the
walls.
The mounds of freshly cut willow branches came to the Arboretum on a 48-foot-long flatbed truck and took many people, trucks and a front-end loader three hours to get from the parking lot to the building site. As the sculpture has progressed, it’s attracted Arboretum visitors who stand in awe to watch the “Stickwork” sculpture take shape.
Work began on Aug. 11 as Sam drilled 93 holes into the ground to outline the structure. Each hole contains one 6-inch steel
T-bar, to which a tall willow branch was attached. Normally, the T-bars aren’t used, but when the willow branches arrived from a Fredonia, New York nursery, the diameter of the willow branches was less than expected.
Thus, the T-bars were used to help the sculpture last longer.
“It will last at least 18 months and perhaps up to two years,” Dougherty says.
It will be open to visitors the entire time it stands, although the number of people inside will be restricted by the Arboretum’s reservation-only
and timed-admission policies.
The sculpture originally was planned for sister attraction the Cleveland Botanical Garden, where it was scheduled for installation in April. But novel coronavirus-related restrictions shut down both, and it was rescheduled for a late-summer creation at the Holden Arboretum.
As an homage to the originally intended location for the sculpture, mini sculptures made of sticks have been placed in the big planters on the Botanical Garden’s Terrace.