When was patrick dougherty born

For viewers the pleasure is elemental and beyond politics and financial forces. I like activating public spaces and being part of the world of ideas.

I think of creativity as the ability to problem solve fluidly and to produce a positive outcome. It also means thinking on the verge and feeling a sense of imminent possibility as you seek a solution. I try to approach a new site, a new situation, expansively, unencumbered by predisposition. When I have the opportunity to have a group of students come by, I always encourage them to make things, because grappling with materials produces new ideas. The value of working on a project in public for three weeks is the chance for the viewers to see the sculpture develop over time and participate in the process.

When someone calls the police on the first day about a culprit unloading limbs across from their house, often it is the same people inviting me for dinner before the opening celebration. The building process is a transformative one where saplings are woven into a storyline and convey a credible illusion. I believe a good sculpture should provide the viewer with many starting points and promote associative thinking.

For example, a successful sculpture might induce dreams of simple shelter, memories of childhood play or pleasant recall of an early tryst shielded by a favorite tree. Galleries are generally neutral spaces where ideas are presented without competition. For example, an abstract work conceived in a studio can be appreciated fully for the its size, style and message, yet move the same work onto the street and it is lost among parking meters, light posts, cars and other well-designed objects around it.

A work conceived for a park or streetscape must have an appropriate scale and must resonate subliminally with its surroundings. Its placement requires consideration of traffic patterns and quirks of human behavior. Viewer safety, weather conditions and public wear and tear are all important considerations. Basically I have to strategize to reduce impediments to viewing and to develop interplay with the site that encourages engagement.

But whether it is a gallery that provides a neutral forum or a busy street corner that must be accommodated, the artwork itself has to contain the energy to connect viscerally with those who view it. I think all cutting edge work has its guerrilla phases and, if it proves relevant, it matures and is sanctified.

I had my own acting-out-in-public phase and I know others who started out without permission. Artists should persist and present their ideas. In some more repressive countries it can translate into jail time or house arrest for the artist. I personally do not like tagging with its sense of juvenile anarchy and am hoping that it will become irrelevant soon.

Early on, I learned to partner with organizations and invariably we would seek volunteers to help gather large quantities of saplings. I am not the only person out there who likes a good sapling; closet stick collectors started coming out of the woodwork and before long I had volunteers of every ilk looking for a chance to indulge their basic building urges.

In the starting phase, I set up the parameters of the work, laying out the footprint and projecting how the final product should feel in its site.

I sometimes make a drawing or small model so that everyone can see the idea. I break the process of building into smaller pieces, so that a volunteer can practice without fear of failure. Those who return several times tend to have more complicated tasks. I try to do the work on the entire exterior myself because those sticks are the most crucial to the finished look. The interior demands lots of hands and enormous detailing and much of the assistance is applied within.

I am energized by the hubbub of the communal work, but I remain fully responsible for the outcome. It is my work and the volunteers are free to relax and just dig in. PD: My whole effort to become a sculptor as an adult dovetailed with a secret childhood dream to become an artist. Picking up a stick back then and bending it seemed to give me big ideas, and, when grown, I capitalized on those childhood urges.

In addition, my dad, with his commitment to rural health, embodied selfless outreach and personal engagement. His modeling helped me to craft my own sculptural efforts toward engagement with the viewing public. Early on, I began to include volunteers from the local community as part of my construction plans, and I also maintained a building site without fences where passersby could stop and ask questions.

A provocative sculpture, like a good health plan, is not something our fellow citizens consciously need. That awareness often takes a nudge. My trajectory or perhaps aspirations for my career were set by a chance conversation with a visiting artist at the local art department.

As my credibility grew, I was offered greater opportunities and sought partnerships with sponsors around the United States and the world to create bigger-than-life sculptures from saplings. PD: For children, a stick is an imaginative object; it is a tool, a weapon, or a piece of a wall.

I like to think that somewhere in my subconscious there is residual know-how 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.

As luck would have it, I was stationed in Germany near a military Special Services Center which offered classes as well as the use of a well-equipped craft shop. Under good guidance, I learned to use every tool and tried my hand at furniture, jewelry, clay, and more. In that era, I struggled unsuccessfully to put my ideas to a number of materials, but ultimately rediscovered the saplings along my own driveway.

I had two breakthrough moments. First, I came to understand what birds already knew about twigs—that is, saplings have an infuriating tendency to tangle with everything.

This inadvertent catching is the simplest method of joining and can be used to build enormous structures without the aid of rope, nails, or other joining material. Secondly, not only do saplings carry the overtones of the forest, but they are lines with which to draw. This realization encouraged the use of drawing techniques to enhance the surfaces of the objects I constructed. For example, when a pencil strikes a piece of paper, the result is a series of tapered lines.

Since saplings are tapered, organizing all the small ends in one direction can give the impression of a flowing motion in the surface. Using larger gestures than a pencil would allow, I was able to imbue the static surfaces with the drawing quality of a winter landscape where the bare branches seem so active and alive.

PD: Childhood play is a first introduction to branches as a primary building material and gives rudimentary insight into why some structures stand and others fall over.

But as a sculpture student, I wanted to work big and my efforts in clay kept falling over and were impossible to move into a kiln. A sapling had that potential, and I developed a proprietary interest in all the sweetgum and red maple saplings along the roadways of North Carolina.

Since maintenance crews were sent to cut them down, they seemed a ready source for experimentation. As my career began looking up, I gathered saplings on the verge of railroad tracks in Savannah, GA and between warehouses in Madison, WI. When working at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, I was given a patch of willow on the edge of the Verrazano Bridge on Staten Island; Hawaii yielded the invasive, strawberry guava; and Kansas had an overrun of rough leaf dogwood and Siberian elm.

Louisiana has willow and water moccasins along rivers, and Maine sports redtwig dogwood and cantankerous moose in upland swamps. Currently my supply of saplings is a product of urbanization. As towns and housing development sprawl, there is a small window of time between the forest being cut and the pouring of foundations. My current source is the regrowth of saplings in the vacant lot on the outskirts of most American cities. What made you decide to study art history and sculpture?

Fortunately, all the previous education could be folded in and specific knowledge becomes incredibly useful. For example, literature majors not only read for pleasure but strive to understand how words can be employed to transfix the reader. Sculptors have the similar challenge of crafting materials into compelling illusions that cause a passerby to come running. Further, I am forever grateful for my exposure to administration.

My trick, if I have one, has been to partner with an organization and use their good will and leverage in the community to organize the logistics of the build. That equates to organizing funding, ordering scaffolding, finding willing volunteers, and locating a sapling supply. PD: I think of an art career as a long-term event that requires patience and persistence. Visitors are invited to go inside each vessel.

The tree saplings—primarily maple and gum—used to make the piece were responsibly harvested from Duke Forest and Triangle Land Conservancy, organizations with which Patrick Dougherty has long relationships.

Owing to the organic material used and its outdoor setting, Step Right Up is a temporary installation.