A work three years in the making finally made its appearance on Grounds last week at the Lower Arts Lawn with the unveiling of the Stickwork Project. The project offered students and community members a rare opportunity to work alongside a world-renowned artist, Patrick Dougherty, to build one of his famous sculptures made of sticks.
Dougherty, who was hired by the Fralin Museum of Art to come to the University, has created about 260 sculptures made solely from branches in the past 30 years, utilizing hundreds of volunteers along the way. University-affiliated project volunteers harvested saplings and cut down branches in a forest area off Grounds, loaded them into truck and brought them back to Grounds in a process that took two days.
“Some volunteers are University oriented, people who are in the arts and normal, regular people who heard about it and want to get involved,” Dougherty said. “To me that’s the best part. They are working on my work. People come in to put some energy into it.”
The structure’s construction will span three weeks — which is the time frame of all of Dougherty’s projects — and is set to be completed on Friday, Oct. 18. “I never finish early but I never finish late,” Dougherty said.
Currently, there is scaffolding covering the area that serves as an exoskeleton and enables people work on the structure, but it will be removed at the end of construction. Volunteers work alongside Dougherty almost everyday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Dougherty said he couldn’t “imagine a more perfect place for a sculpture.” The piece will be composed of five elements that will work their way down the hill of the Lower Arts Lawn while “gaining momentum.”
“One thing Patrick is interested in is the making,” said Sculpture Prof. Bill Bennett, the project manager. “There’s a kind of work ethic he brings to the task that most people don’t have.”
The piece currently has no name, as Dougherty typically names his work on the last day. He did, however, make a list of words he wants the sculpture to provoke.
“His key words were ‘movement’ and ‘river,’” second-year Architecture student Carolina Kraska said. “He’s going to bend [the branches] down and make them all conjoined. It’s going to seem like the structure is flowing down the hill.”
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