Just outside the entrance to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is a grouping of stick/twig buildings by Patrick Dougherty of North Carolina:
I didn’t know anything about him until the May/June ’09 issue of Southern Accents had a feature about him (can you believe Southern Accents has printed its last issue!?). Anyway, the artist has done about 150 or so of these stick/twig installations, and they last about two years. He finished this set in M’ry in March of this year and already he’s done others at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Kansas.
The S/Accents article reads in part:
He then chooses several large limbs to function as structural pieces and contorts them to create the curves he needs. From there, he weaves a loose cover of sticks without using ropes, nails, or glue because he wants the sculptures to resonate with the same natural energy he senses in birds’ nests, beavers’ dams, and piles of sticks washed together in a river.
“There’s a certain quickness about having to enjoy something before it fades. It’s the same joy that a bunch of roses brings. The fact that it won’t last forever is part of its beauty. Sticks say something about how time marches on.”
From the M’ry Museum’s site, it sounds as though they will be taking down his installation on March 1, 2010.
We loved it. There are pictures of some of his other installations here on his website.