Patrick Dougherty - Stick Artist

Patrick Dougherty calls himself a sculptor and he calls what he makes "classical stick architecture." I suppose by "classical" he means as in "age-old," from the time the first humans built shelters for themselves out of whatever material Nature provided.

Dougherty is identified with Land Artists and Earth Artists. "Stick Artist" sounds to me like it would fit better than anything else (his own site is called "Stickworks"), but I'm not an expert on his line of work, just a curious person who has been intrigued by some of the pictures of his works that I've seen (and recently while researching this post I've looked at several dozen such pictures).

Andy Goldsworthy is also referred to as both a Land Artist and an Earth Artist, and these terms seem to apply when you consider most of his works, but Dougherty's works don't seem to me to quite fit into either of these categories. As I understand it, Land Art is outdoor art that is made from what's already out there in nature (the soil, rocks, and other such things that are already on the site where the "sculpture" is to be made); Dougherty may get his sticks from nearby, but although his sculptures look as if they almost had to have been constructed on the site (not moved there from elsewhere as they would probably fall apart) they could be made virtually anywhere, and although they are very intriguing and have their own special qualities they don't look as if they might have been formed by nature right there on the spot where they are situated, as Goldsworthy's do. They definitely look "man-made" (and this is not at all a bad thing in my opinion, but I'm just saying that there is a difference). This (looks like Nature could have made it vs. definitely looks like a human made it) is how I differentiate his kind of art from (most of) that of Andy Goldsworthy and others whose art seems to fit better into the Earth Art/Land Art categories.

Earth Art is usually, I think, Land Art that's done on a very large scale.

Here are some pages with definitions of Land Art and Earth Art and examples of artworks and artists in these categories:

Tells about Land Art here, and compares it with Earth Art

This is a Wikipedia article on Land Art

ArtLex on Earth Art and Earthworks

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PATRICK DOUGHERTY TALKS ABOUT HIS ART

He's a very good speaker and he stays on-subject and goes into things very thoroughly (yet not tediously). You can learn a lot about what he thinks about his art and how he decides how he's going to approach each individual "site-specific sculpture" by reading an interview or listening to him talk.

Some of the links below will get you to pictures of his works including works in progress (so that you can see how these things are put together), and some sites include extended commentary by Dougherty either in audio or in print. I'm also throwing in a short video someone made and put on YouTube that takes you "in motion" around and through one of Dougherty's installations.

I'll begin with the best interview -- one you might want to read before looking at the pictures on the other sites. This is really good. Unfortunately, I looked at all the pictures and read everything on the other sites before I finally got to this interview. I wish I'd read it first.

Here it is: An interview with Patrick Dougherty. The page is kind of confusing -- At first it looks like the interview begins on the right side, just under the picture, but actually it begins further down the page on the left side.

The introduction to the interview calls his works "freeform assemblages." Apparently "Yardwork" is the name of a sculpture he made in Quebec, where the interview takes place. The picture shown at the top of the page is the Yardwork sculpture.

Here are a few quotes I plucked out of this interview, but there is much more to read when you get to the site:

"When I turned to sculpting with saplings, it seemed easy to co-opt the forces of nature and play a kind of energy flow onto the surfaces of the large forms I made."

"In completing the sculpture I developed passageways through this outer shell, so viewers could glimpse intriguing bits of the interior. Visitors can stand inside each of the inner structures and explore a kind of internal maze."

"The use of sticks and the forest from which they come are part of the oldest memories of the human race and seem forever entwined with human fantasy."

"I say of my work that I make large scale temporary sculptures from materials gathered in the nearby landscape."

"Certainly gardens are a kind of rendition of the unfettered wilds. Shrubs, trees, flowers and grass become commodities and are forced into human geometry. I try to free the surfaces of my work using sticks as a drawing material, work them in such a way they look like they are escaping those chains of being planted in a row. I image that the wilderness lurks inside my forms and that it is an irrepressible urge."

"I make temporary work that challenges some traditional ideas about sculpture, that it should last forever, can be bought and sold and can accrue value for those who own it."

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WHERE TO FIND PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIS WORK

Patrick Dougherty - Installations -- This is on his own site.

When you get to this page, click on "page 1" over at the left, then when you get to page 1, left-click on whichever little picture over at the left side you want to see enlarged. It will replace the large picture that already shows. There are three pages altogether. These pictures show several of his projects as they looked when completed.

I especially like the photograph (on page 1) that shows large basket-like shapes seemingly fascinated with their reflections seen in a pool of water.

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There are some interesting photos of one of his installations on a blog called "San Francisco Civic Center":

I wonder if those two people sitting on a bench near this particular sculpture are real people. I'm sure he didn't make them, but maybe some other artist put them there. They could be real people; but there is a very obviously fake man in the first picture that may well have been made from sticks for all I know as he's very "stiff," so I thought perhaps other artists might have contributed their own sculptures to the site before Dougherty came along.

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On the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens site you don't click on the small pictures -- Instead you just hold your mouse pointer over them and they show up in a larger size to the right. This site shows dozens of photos of an installation being constructed at the Botanical Gardens, beginning with the arrival of a very big truckload of sticks. You a good idea of how his structures are made from these photographs.

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Patrick Dougherty's Lookout Tree

Have your speaker or your headset turned on before you go to this page. There is a video just below the middle of the page that starts by itself when you get to the page and Dougherty starts right in talking, making you wonder where the voice is coming from. -- Scroll quickly down the page to just past the middle to see the video (it's small).

In the video, Dougherty, at a site where he's just built a sculpture called "Lookout Tree," explains how he looks for just the right spot and then gets ideas for what he's going to put there from a consideration of many things -- how the site looks, what's nearby, its history, the way people interact with it, etc. Then he explains how he (and many volunteer assistants) go about making the structures. Very interesting.

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Childhood Dreams is the name of a work by Dougherty at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona.

Click on the orange tab called "The Process" to see him working on the this sculpture. The pictures will change by themselves...You have to keep your mouse pointer off the picture...It can be a little maddening.

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VIDEO: XANADU
TIME: 2 MINUTES, 7 SECONDS

A walk around and through a Patrick Dougherty
installation called Xanadu in Lisle, Illinois

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I myself like some of his works better than others (but as I mentioned, I've only seen photographs of them). The ones I like best do not look like they're meant to resemble a castle or church or anything like that, but look more like they could actually be real shelters or places constructed to observe certain views from or to meditate in, not meant to be decorative but to be functional. (Note: By "functional" I do not mean to imply that they should be austere and heartless and boring).

- Jean

P.S. Brian mentioned in his comment on this post that Dougherty's stick sculptures reminded him of African weaver bird nests. I found a picture (okay to use, from Wikipedia) of two weaver bird nests -- not in Africa, but in western India, and I'm going to add it here:

Weaver Bird Nests - Western India

Note about Comments - If clicking on Comments doesn't open them for you, try pushing down the Ctrl key while clicking -- That's the way I have to do it. - Jean

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Andy Goldsworthy

It must be hard to believe (how could I have not known about him), but I didn't recognize Andy Goldsworthy's name when someone told me about him some months ago. I thought he must be an artist that only a few knew about, but I was very wrong. It turned out that he is well-known throughout the world (just not by me until recently).

I understand that a few critics have looked down upon what he does, and in fact I went searching for articles the authors of which did not admire Goldsworthy and his art. I thought I had finally found one but it was no longer available on the web. I'm sure that some day someone will come along and read this and let me know where to find such an article.

Meantime, after reading one of his books, and after reading a lot about him on the web, and looking at many, many pictures and videos showing the artist at work and describing his projects and his thoughts about them, I've come to be one of those who indeed greatly admire him and in fact think he's probably an artistic genius. This you can be sure about: He's not your normal artist.

But what kind of an artist is he? An article in Wikipedia calls Andy Goldsworthy a "sculptor, photographer and environmentalist." Some refer to him as an "environmental sculptor" or simply an "artist." There is no doubt at all that he is an artist.

What does he do, exactly? He assembles objects found in nature, usually at the same place where he's found them (though occasionally, for an exhibition, he constructs "installation art" that's not done on the site where he found the objects). He makes things with these natural objects (such as leaves, rocks, sticks, ice.....) that appear as though nature has made them, and yet they are obviously made by an artist....In other words, what he makes with natural materials all around him is what Nature would make if Nature were an artist - Nature produces the materials and the inspiration and the artist produces the work. That's how it seems to me. It's wonderful. It's amazing. Only a human could do these things, but it has to be a very special human so in tune with Nature that it's as though he is an artistic extension of it...the part of it that makes art.

Most of his works are, and are very much meant to be, temporary. Some last just hours, or minutes. Some can't really quite be "finished" before they are destroyed by wind or gravity or other natural forces, yet that doesn't matter (it's no doubt disappointing when the artworks prematurely disintegrate, yet that's what happens in Nature -- There is constant change, not always seemingly for the good).

Goldsworthy experiences something as he's working that he tries to express, making something visible that wasn't there but could have been (this last is a paraphrase of a quote, but I have lost the quote and so this is my interpretation of the idea), and he is always ready to photograph what he does so although his work might have disappeared by the time anyone else knows about it, we're able to see what he's done and what's happened to it. (I wonder if anyone would have known he was an artist if he lived before we had photography.)

I've noticed in all he does and in all he says there is quietness (not quietness as in "lifelessness" but quietness as in "acute awareness"). He's very aware of what's going on in nature; he doesn't want to impose on it but to be part of it, and he's naturally a quiet, inwardly-focused person (an introvert like myself - As he explains, "I enjoy being by myself.....To be honest, I think I am drained by...people").

And he's very intense. There is a lot of tension and drama in what he does, too, no matter that it's made of sticks and stones, and that's one of the things we can learn from viewing his work, i.e., what's in nature Nature is not about pretty scenery but about natural forces and change.

Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England and now lives in Scotland.

Below are

1) videos
2) links to online articles, photographs, and an interview with Goldsworthy
3) mention of his books
4) some Goldsworthy quotations.

VIDEOS

EXCERPT FROM RIVERS & TIDES - ANDY GOLDSWORTHY, ARTIST
TIME: 4 MINUTES

Left-click once on arrow in middle of video, or the arrow at left under the video to begin. There is sound with this. This short video is an excerpt from the documentary called Rivers and Tides.

WHERE TO RENT THE FULL (AND NO DOUBT MUCH HIGHER QUALITY) VIDEO OF "RIVERS AND TIDES" ONLINE

You can rent the video from amazon.com here for $2.99, for 30 days (7-day viewing period after you've started to look at it). It's 1 hour and 31 minutes long.

OTHER SHORT GOLDSWORTHY VIDEOS THAT YOU CAN WATCH FOR FREE ONLINE

-- There are several other short videos showing Goldsworthy at work that you can watch, which I've put together in a "pod." The pod is among the video pods at the bottom of the page. Just left-click gently on a picture to start a video (if you don't click gently, it sometimes takes you to YouTube...It's kind of ugly there, though I like YouTube).

-- Here's a site that's loaded with short videos about Goldsworthy. They're not what you'll find in the video pod on this page, nor will you find them anywhere on YouTube. It's on the ArtisanCam site.

There are MANY videos on this site to do with Goldsworthy. Just click on pictures, or click on questions. There's a gold mine here but you have to try things -- a left-click on a picture usually leads to a video, or else several videos. These are of very good quality and are quite interesting. You could spend a long time here, so be prepared to come back later (again and again) if you don't have a long time.

Be sure, on that first page, to not only click on the smaller pictures to get to videos, but also the larger picture at the left, showing Goldsworthy working with small sticks, on an installation that looks to me like a huge spiderweb. If you click on that one larger picture you'll get to three videos showing Goldsworthy and several assistants putting together some of his installations at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, with commentary by Goldsworthy as well as the artisans helping him.

LINKS TO ARTICLES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

-- This page has some very nice photos of some of his works, plus comments by Goldsworthy.

--Nice article in the New York Times on Goldsworthy

--Review of the documentary "Rivers and Tides"

-- Another good review of "Rivers and Tides"

-- Q&A with Andy Goldsworthy - Time Magazine

This last one, above, includes a Photo Essay (Click on picture under the word PHOTOS on left side of page) including a very interesting interview with Goldsworthy.

-- Sheepfolds is shown on this page in a 360 degree picture that moves around the whole scene as you watch -- or -- do this for a real treat: Hold your mouse cursor on the picture (press on the left side of your mouse and keep it pushed down), anywhere, and move the picture around so that you can see anything you want, even the sky, even the ground below.

-- Andy Goldsworthy Online on the Artcyclopedia site.

BOOKS BY ANDY GOLDSWORTHY

Andy Goldsworthy has had many books published, and I'm assuming that all of them are as well illustrated with his beautiful photographs as the one I've read (Passage).

This biography of Goldsworthy in Wikipedia has a long list of his publications toward the bottom of the page. Here are names of just some of these books: Stone, Wood, Passage, Time, Hand to Earth, Wall, Touching Nature, Enclosure, Rivers & Tides, The Art of Andy Goldsworthy: Complete Works. There are many others listed.

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY QUOTATIONS

I have a feeling that people have taken every sentence he has uttered (including, probably, "I'm going around the corner to get a cup of coffee") and made them into
"quotations," but these are the ones that strike me personally.

"At best a work of art releases unpredictable energy that is a shock to both artist and viewer - I do not mean shock in conventional sense but an emotional tremor that articulates a feeling which has been in search of form."

"Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made."

"People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there."

"My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made."

"The older I get the more I realise how fluid an urban environment is. Bunhill Fields graveyard for example, represents the absence of people but also the presence of their memory."

"As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone."

In an interview, Goldsworthy was asked: "What kind of a person are you?" He answered, "Dull." The interviewer then asked, "How would you describe yourself to someone who's never met you?" Goldsworthy answered, "People want to meet me. I think they have an idea that it's going to be really interesting. And it's not. I'm actually not that interesting. What I make is really interesting. But I...I am not."____

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