well I always say of myself that I'm a
sculptor and I don't know exactly what
that means but I like the moniker it's
the handling of that material often that
I key off of i would say sticks give me
a good ideas and part of that is that
just touching them seems to speak of
their imminent potential I get very
enthusiastic at that point how's it
going Elsa? Is that the fastest tower of the
world? I started out because I just
simply love the wood I love trying to
see what I could do with the bending of
it I like to try to make different
shapes as if I could make them stand up
but I've enhanced that whole process of
it by including people from the
community and also organizations and
trying to figure out what makes good
public work and how you enliven people's
imagination and how you fit work in so
that it seems to fit in space I'm
intensely interested in the placement of
things and the success of things that
are public so I've come to realize that
we have a lot of closets togethers out
there and not only do they want to
gather sticks they actually want to
build things so we've done really well
in having a constant flow of interested
parties willing to throw themselves into
a lot of work hey John how are you doing
up there we start up leaving a basic
spider web structure that is very random
we've and then you can fill the walls
you can wrap the doors whipstitch the
top make the fritz on the top
are you looking good up there Patrick
says that everyone can be a stick
working but there's definitely some
people are better than others yeah these
things are green and so they have to be
green they can't be too can't be too dry
will it was a great one for basket
making and so I use that a lot if it's
available maples up and down the East
Coast in Florida you have to use one
thing if you're in Hawaii you might use
another you strawberry guava about in
the northwest you might use a vine maple
or alter the Midwest has got a lot of
Elms Chinese Elms and Russian elm and a
lot of these things they just hate where
do you get sticks both too often get
them where the bulldozers have taken the
big trees down and they're waiting for
the box store and these little saplings
have come back up we've gathered behind
sewage treatment plants behind the high
school stadium down along the river I've
learned that if you want to know who
owns a piece of property just take a
running chainsaw and sit it on the
ground someone will be there immediately
I was in the military in Germany the
farming or crafts program was fantastic
I repaired antiques i soldered i was
able to weld i was just really able to
immerse myself every night for three
years and the ideas of making things in
using different kinds of materials after
being in the service I've forced myself
to go back to school using the GI Bill
and spent two years in unc art lab and
really started to ask myself what
sculpture was what art was and decided I
really in fact would become a sculptor
the second phase beyond making a
structural weave is to try to status
eyes the surface in other words I I'm
kind of building a canvas and then
drawing on it sticks are tapered so when
you organize all your tapers in one
direction you get a sense of movement
from it little looping lines lift the
whole weight of the tower if you have
things that are very flat on the ground
it's it's things very heavily so I try
to make these little lines on the bottom
that look like they're swooping up hey
how you doing where I'm a nice to see
you one of the things we've done is been
nice to people as they come around so
we're embedding this piece in the
community now we hope that because we've
been nice people will like it better and
they'll protect it and see it as part of
their own environment everybody that
walked by and I mean literally everybody
he would chat with he'd invite them in
he'd stop and talk to them and I asked
him about it and he said that he felt he
needed to make friends for the sculpture
and that it wouldn't be protected once
he was gone and he wanted people to love
it as he did if you make something
that's too abstract in certain sites it
might seem uninteresting so this was a
place where I felt like that if I made
something that looked like an object or
something that you could relate to is
kind of a shadow building of some sort
you know nature configuring itself as a
as a pantheon maybe I was influenced by
being in Washington lately and working
at the Renwick because everything in the
entire Washington area is based on the
Pantheon and so it must have been
infiltrating into my mind
renovating the Renwick gallery in 2015
with an opportunity to remind our thumbs
why this building was creature in the
first place in a sense every museum
exhibit as a potential for you to have
an experience of wonder at the place
where you may go to commune with art and
where if you're so lucky you might even
be carried away in the moment but the
Renwick we have a series of seven big
pieces that are very amorphous in a way
and they fling themselves up against the
wall or they roll across the surface but
it allows the viewer to go inside and
then creep around the back because then
go in another one and make their way
from one side of the room all the way to
the other as you walk through the
exhibition you'll see different kinds of
installation some of them will remain
but some of them won't Patrick
dougherty's installation and John gratis
installation will eventually go away
this ephemeral quality really dovetails
nicely with some of the evolution of the
field of American crafts where focus has
changed from craft and now we're we're
thinking about craft and specific
objects that exist over a long period of
time to craft as a verb the act of doing
something a certain way
when you asked artists to weigh in on
what it means to be amazed by the world
out there it said something about where
we are at the culture and in the world
that they've gravitated towards the
sense of nature as their most critical
resource by bringing nature into the
medium of the subject they are reminding
us of the values of what is being lost
and they are giving us an opportunity to
reflect on what is most at risk in our
world I see my work is being propelled
by people's concern about the
environment we've come to the
realization that each of us is not
trying to do anything wrong but as a
whole we started having a real impact I
think that my work is filled a space in
there where there's some visual relief
there's a kind of nostalgia to some
degree but in a real way it's a
touchstone for the things we care about
in the natural world it reminds us of
animal life it reminds us of simple
shelter it reminds us of simpler times
when we seem to be more in touch with
the environment and I think my work
comes into play it finds an audience on
the cusp of some of these concerns
I've worked about eight different pieces
for Patrick and there's something about
every piece that strikes you that the
other one didn't this piece is the
archways stone with the ceiling in it
it's always a special something that
grabs the eye people like to add sticks
they like to take them out and I take
them out and put them back in somewhere
else we will never look as good as today
I think it's sort of an organic thing
and eventually it does have a life and
it's temporary it's like any tree in the
forest it's going to not last forever
it's not real unless you can reach over
and touch it and so I've tried to make
work that has no barrier making it into
a place where somebody can grab hold of
it can push it can feel its properties
can really experience it it's much more
fruitful it's much more compelling
allowing people to interact with them
fully and get a sense of what it is I'm
a seventh-generation Orange County
native I actually live not far from the
plantation how family was originally on
be able to combine art in nature and my
route to the mazing since I want to
continue to make orange county great and
seeing things today like stickler this
is just something that adds icing to the
cake
when I finish the sculpture I'm kind of
redundant I feel like there's an
equation there that's my job to build
something exciting and then I turn it
over to the public and it's their job to
see what they say
you