Stickwork

One of the highlights of our trip in March to New York was a walk through the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, where we came across a large-scale sculpture made of twigs. I like this kind of nature-based art in the style of Andy Goldsworthy, that rises out of the landscape like a fairy castle.

I didn’t know the piece was by American artist Patrick Doughterty until his name and a link to his website popped up in my campus e-mail account two weeks ago. Doughterty has been commissioned to do a large-scale sculpture from willow and other wood harvested at Saint John’s University and Abbey’s arboretum. And we’re all invited to help.

I’ve signed up for two shifts this week and the first was to cut and bind willow branches. It was hot, sweaty work and a day to be happy for the dry summer that meant the willows were not in water or marsh. The crews of volunteers will be gathering “sticks” for three days, and on Friday we begin stripping the leaves from them. The size of the piece is only limited by how much material we can gather.

Dougherty said he limits his construction period to three weeks because his vision is always too ambitious and he has to put the time parameter on it to keep moving. He’s already talking about how the piece needs the scale to “sell itself” when people see it from the road and the scope to invite interaction. The shape, inspired by the campus’s Stella Maris chapel on the shore of Lake Sagatagan, will be unlike his other pieces.

I’ll post photos as the project continues based on my volunteer shifts. It’s a great way to experience fall in the prairies and wetlands of this place, and yet another reason to be happy to live near a university and Benedictine Abbey.

Here’s Brother Walter Kieffer hauling off our shift’s worth of cut and bundled willow to the sculpture site.