Using raw materials, Dougherty collaborates with Mother Nature to creates beautiful sculptures.
There is a small dogwood grove behind Patrick Dougherty’s hometown where Dougherty draws his artistic power. It was there, flanked by the woody North Carolinian foliage, where Dougherty fell in love with nature and its elusive properties. He would spend hours hollowing out living thickets to make bedrooms, kitchens, and reading nooks for himself and his guests. He credits these early forays into building simple shelters with influencing his artistic practice today.
“For children, a stick is an imaginative object; it is a tool, a weapon, or a piece of a wall,” Dougherty shared with Mission. “I like to think that somewhere in my subconscious, there is residual knowledge passed on from our hunting and gathering ancestors. Like all children, I was a serious fort builder and capitalized on some of that innate know-how.”
Even then, Dougherty was captivated by the beauty of the natural world and how sculptures could engage in an intimate conversation with the environment around them. His sister, Kate Farell, said the young artist would often guide his siblings through the pristine 20 acres just west of Chapel Hill to scour materials and turn them into something beautiful.
“Patrick, the eldest of five and a born outdoorsman, led the rest of us on countless forest expeditions,” Farrell, a poet, once said about her brother. “Even back then he brought to his wanderings a love of nature and a knack for ‘dwelling in possibility’—an aptitude that would prove as useful for creating art as for exploring a forest—and his urge to build left a long trail of forts, tree houses, lean-tos, and hideouts.”
Over the past 35 years, Dougherty has been designing, ideating, and creating enchanting stickwork sculptures that have captivated a global audience. But he shares that his artistic mission and primary medium weren’t always so clear. When he was attending the University of North Carolina back in 1981, he struggled to seamlessly blend his artistic ideas with different materials. And it wasn’t until a magical rekindling with the raw materials of his past that his artistic practice came to take shape. Compelled by the raw beauty of the saplings in his driveway, he found his medium, one that was plentiful and renewable, likening them to “having an endless warehouse of material at my fingertips.” And since then, he hasn’t looked back. Now he works strictly with saplings as his medium of choice—and the results could not be more breathtaking.
“I try to remember how I ‘feel’ when I first see it. My first impression is a moment of imminent possibility.”
By blending his love of nature with masterful carpentry skills, he fashions tree saplings as a construction material. These monumental-scale artistic works have graced multiple countries, from the United States and Scotland to Japan and Brussels. In 1982, he catapulted his artistic career, installing his first show at the North Carolina Biennial Artists’ exhibition. Since then, he has shown at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (2020), the U.S. Botanic Garden (2019), and the Ackland Art Museum of UNC (2017). He has built an extensive installation list and won numerous awards, including the North Carolina Artistic Award, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and the highly prestigious Factor Prize for Southern Art. But as he has made over 300 works, he shared that it’s hard to pin down a personal favorite.
“My favorite sculpture is always the one I am working on,” he said. “But I particularly enjoyed working at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati in 2018 on a work entitled Far Flung.”
With the help of more than 150 community volunteers, Dougherty transformed six tons of willow tree saplings into whimsical shapes and forms that encircled the art museum. For this installation, the 77-year-old was inspired by the Tiffany exhibition that was on view at the downtown fine art museum. As he was weaving through the space, Dougherty was reminded of the twisting tendril motif in the art nouveau movement. An iteration of this classic visual is seen in his work, interpreted as a sprawling vine that moves through the museum’s front lawn. As is evident in many of his other works, there is an innate sense of play and movement. Here, the rolled piping on the top of the sculpture prompts viewers to explore and discover the space on their own time.
“I try to approach a prospective site without preconception,” he explained about his creative process. “I try to remember how I ‘feel’ when I first see it. My first impression is a moment of imminent possibility. Several ideas usually emerge and I try to problem-solve how I could best bring one idea to fruition.”
One could argue the compelling beauty in Dougherty’s sculptures lies in their temporality. Unlike the great Roman and Greek statues made from marble and copper, Dougherty’s statues are made from the natural materials around the places he creates and, thus, don’t last for centuries. They creep up the sides of buildings and integrate themselves into the surrounding trees. Because of their exposure to the elements, the installations naturally wear down over time. And instead of shying away from this degradation, Dougherty welcomes it into his artistic practice and makes it an essential feature of his art.
“There is a longing in most of us to cross the forest curtain, unencumbered by worldly possession, and spend a day in the Garden of Eden.”
“My work, like every good flowerbed, has a moment of glory but ultimately returns to the soil,” he reflected. “I have always appreciated this proposition and I believe that impermanence draws the viewer into a more intimate relationship with the sculpture.”
While his work is often characterized as statues, there is a unique interactive quality to it. By integrating burrows to find solace in and places to shade yourself from the sun, he invites viewers to enter into the various nooks and crannies and take in the beauty of the surrounding nature. Not only are the works beautiful, but they also open a dialogue between the viewer and nature that makes the viewer more keenly aware of the natural world.
“There is a longing in most of us to cross the forest curtain, unencumbered by worldly possession, and spend a day in the Garden of Eden, and, for just a moment, to live in the shadow of a tree and breathe with the other animals,” he said.
Dougherty believes that the contemporary challenge of this time (and one artists should bring more emphasis to) is creating a harmonic relationship with the plants and animals that share the Earth with us. By actively touching and sitting in these nature-made sculptures, Dougherty wants viewers to be more keenly aware of the natural world and its fragility.
And while he advocates for less coal burning and more electric cars, his work also fights for a betterway to interact with nature on a personal note, opening a profound connection between art and society and climate change.
Dougherty shared his thoughts surrounding the imminent climate crisis. “I feel as powerless as everyone else,” he said.“It is hard to understand how individual effort can stand in the face of systemic problems generated by contemporary life. The best that I can do is make work that seems relevant to me and incidentally reminisces about the natural world.”
But as Dougherty has created multiple sculptures across the seven continents, there is no place like home. After each installation, he looks forward to reconnecting with his roots and getting back to the source of his inspiration in Chapel Hill, spending time in the woods around his house.
“Sometimes, in a lull, I conjure up the picnic table where I built my first sapling sculpture from those red maples near the creek,” he said. “That day was magical; it was a portal ajar—a narrow hallway between my front yard and the bigger world of ideas.” And this is perhaps the most beautiful thing about Dougherty’s work. With all the sculptures he creates, he invites viewers into this portal, introducing them to the innate beauty of nature and its magnificent capabilities.
All images courtesy of the artist. Taken from Mission’s Sustainability issue.
