This evening at the recently opened Stroud College I was fortunate to hear Patrick Dougherty talk about his work and show slides. This was a unique chance to see this amazing artist and I think many will agree his landscape art is very wonderful - some enclosed below and also an link to his excellent website.
Photos: Stroud College entrance this evening and one of those long sweeping corridors
The Cotswold Water Park have Patrick as Artist in Residence there at the moment. They write on their website:
Photo: Patrick talking this eveningDougherty often uses saplings gathered near the installation site, adjusting his designs to the different ways local materials bend and respond in his hands. Dougherty also enjoys working with communities inspiring them to create ambitious and unusual sculptures with natural materials.
His sculpture reveals the influence of elements more commonly associated with drawing, which appear in the linear hatchings and patterns of the branches. His work always delights the viewer with the unexpected and mysterious.
The evening started in the cafe and I had a brief chance to talk a little to him about the Ruscombe Brook Action Group and plans to improve water quality. The talk was then upstairs in one of the larger classrooms - put on in partnership with the Stroudwater International Textile Trust Festival.
Some of what Patrick said reminded me of an article by HRH The Prince of Wales in the most recent Resurgence magazine - the article isn't online but it has been a theme of some of his previous talks - see here - he, like many others, recognise that we have lost our capacity to see beyond our individual, and in many cases urbanized, lifestyles. This means that many people now have little or no physical contact with the Earth - a point I have also made in this blog repeatedly. People may see excellent programmes about Nature on their television screens, but they have little – if any – direct experience of their own.
HRH writes: "Nature has become a simplified and sanitized, arm’s-length experience, to be switched on or off at will. It is no longer the 'Mother Nature' that animated the entire world for generations of our forebears. As a result, so many have lost what I would call a 'sense of harmony'. Having become disconnected from Nature, we have discarded our sense of awe and reverence for the natural world. Tragically, we have also largely lost the once common belief that mankind is, above all, a participant in the natural world, with a sacred – yes, a sacred – duty of stewardship to fulfil. In some of our actions we now behave as if we were “Masters of Nature”, and in others as mere bystanders. If we could rediscover that “sense of harmony”, that sense of being a part of and not apart from Nature, and so regain our sense of stewardship, we would perhaps be less likely to see the world as some sort of gigantic production system, capable of ever-increasing outputs for our benefit – at no cost. And we would be more willing to recognize the Earth for what it is – a complex, living organism, dependent on harmony for its health – and ours."
It is worth reading the rest of what HRH has to say on the matter and ideas for the way forward (see here). For me art can have a key role to play - helping people to reconnect with the natural world - and landscape art like the work of Patrick Dougherty does just that.
Patrick is also spending a week in the Cotswold Water Park working with residents and artists. See his website here - quotes below taken from that site along with some of his works to encourage people to visit:
http://www.stickwork.net/
"Dougherty's works allude to nests, cocoons, hives, and lairs built by animals, as well as the manmade forms of huts, haystacks, and baskets, created by interweaving branches and twigs together. Many of his works look 'found' rather than made, as if they were created by the natural force of a tornado sweeping across the landscape. He intentionally tries for this effortless effect, as if his creations just fell or grew up naturally in their settings."
Linda Johnson, A Dialogue with Nature
"My affinity for trees as a material seems to come from a childhood spent wandering the forest around Southern Pines, North Carolina – a place with thick underbrush and many intersecting lines evident in the bare winter branches of trees. When I turned to sculpture as an adult, I was drawn to sticks as a plentiful and renewable resource. I realized that saplings have an inherent method of joining – that is, sticks entangle easily. This snagging property is the key to working material into a variety of large forms.”
Patrick Dougherty
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