{"id":4746,"date":"2018-10-19T07:55:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T16:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/?p=4746"},"modified":"2018-11-06T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T23:11:17","slug":"patrick-dougherty-on-the-fly-at-uva-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/?p=4746","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Dougherty “On The Fly” at UVA, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Dougherty came to Charlottesville a couple of years ago, and I undertook to document his work. \u00a0If you google his name, you’ll soon find lots of background information that I need not repeat here. \u00a0Patrick was in town for about a month, commissioned by UVA Arts to make a stick sculpture in the (then brand new) Arts commons, right next to Ruffin Hall (which some of you know as one of my \u201cclear buildings\u201d).<\/p>\n

Before his arrival, a crew of local volunteers will have assembled.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>In his first week, Patrick gets to know his volunteers in the work to gather his sticks.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Patrick\u2019s raw material is young saplings.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>He\u2019ll correspond with people in the area, to find \u201cdoomed\u201d saplings – i.e. saplings in wooded areas that are about to be clear cut.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>So he tries not to harvest saplings that would otherwise grow into mature trees.<\/span><\/p>\n

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After a week of gathering saplings with his volunteers, the work on the sculpture begins.\u00a0 <\/span>The first slide shows some of the initial work: saplings have been stuck straight into the ground, pressed into ground some four or five feet if possible.\u00a0 <\/span>Each sculptural structure will be anchored by a few very large and strong saplings.\u00a0 <\/span>These will be placed into boreholes that were drilled first. \u00a0 <\/span>At this point, volunteers keep busy preparing the saplings for integration into the sculpture – which mainly involves removing all the leaves.\u00a0 <\/span>Throughout the work, more and more saplings are trucked in from whereever they had been cut.<\/p>\n

Once the installation\u2019s initial layout is secured with these larger saplings, then the work can proceed with smaller saplings and \u201csticks.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>My (uneducated) impression is that the sculptures are more or less woven into place.\u00a0 <\/span>It is weaving with sticks.\u00a0 <\/span>Dougherty uses no fasteners of any kind.\u00a0 <\/span>No nails, screws, twine, rope, zip-ties, nothing of the kind!\u00a0 <\/span>Only the sticks. \u00a0The work proceeds for about two more weeks, at which point the sculpture will be mostly complete.<\/p>\n

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His structures thus fashioned can get quite large.\u00a0 <\/span>Although the one he built at UVA was nowhere more than about ten feet tall, others I\u2019ve seen depicted online can be multiple stories tall.\u00a0 <\/span>They are also very strong.\u00a0 <\/span>Dougherty typically specifies that his installations should be taken down after a year to 18 months.\u00a0 <\/span>But for some reason, this one at UVA was left in place for over three years!\u00a0 <\/span>(UVA wanted to get its money\u2019s worth, and I bet Dougherty had to remind the university to take it down).\u00a0 <\/span>Surprisingly, even at three years old, the sculpture didn\u2019t look all that bad – it got a little shop worn around the edges, and some of the structures had started to sag a bit.\u00a0 <\/span>(I should have photographed it at the end of its life, but I failed to do so).<\/p>\n

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In the fourth week of his visit, Patrick tidies up loose ends and gets ready for his next project.\u00a0 <\/span>I include a slide taken at a farewell reception, of Patrick talking with one of the UVA big wigs who funded the project; and a slide showing the finished project with all (or most) of the volunteers standing with Patrick for a portrait (that last slide was helpfully exposed by my beloved Michele). \u00a0Patrick makes about ten sculptures per year in this fashion: one per month, anywhere in the world. \u00a0Then he takes off two months to be at home with his family.<\/p>\n

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PS<\/p>\n

I did undertake a 3d timelapse of the birth and subsequent aging of the sculpture: I shot two stereo pairs per day for about four months.\u00a0 <\/span>After an initial review of the imagery, I decided that it was not looking very \u201cgood\u201d (constantly and rapidly shifting light was very distracting in the video), so I didn\u2019t do anything more with it.\u00a0 <\/span>But you can see some of the beginnings of aging, if you look closely:<\/p>\n