House of Sticks

Sculptor Patrick Dougherty says, “From childhood we already know everything we need to know about sticks.” We have a large vocabulary about what to do with sticks and how to make things out of them. We pick them up, make piles of them, make tipis, make campfires, make swords to battle each other with, make walking sticks to propel us along. At his lecture, he also said, “I didn’t consciously set out for my art to build community, but because I use so many volunteers, that is what it has also done.”

On Wednesday, I spent two hours weaving willow and ironwood into a wall, filling the gaps and making it a kind of shelter. On the other side of the wall a man said, “I think you could live in here.” The college student working with him was not so sure.

Later, another man, a high school art teacher coming by, said, “I wonder if you coudl build something like this to live in, something more permanent. It would have to have insulation to keep out the cold.”

One of his students, awkward and smart, said, “Are you familiar with the Native American longhouses? I don’t think this would be the type of construction you would choose if you were making an actual shelter.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” the teacher said.

After about 40 minutes of work, the high school students found some sticks they could battle with and their teacher decided it was time to head back to class.

For the second hour, I sat in the room with the art teacher who brought Patrick Dougherty to campus. It turned out we went to the same college. It turned out her grandfather had grown up on my farm. She arrived in this place married to a man who worked on prairies, like my husband. She is a letterpress artist and interested in having her students print my nun stories in the spring. She has divorced and just remarried last month. I told her about my own divorce and remarriage. The conversation so quickly went deep and, though I was conscious of the college student on the other side of the wall, a friend of my niece who lives on the farm, I let it go and just shared, let my story live in that room of sticks.

We already know so much about the world of sticks. And when we are invited into a magical room, we know what to do there as well.

 

my wall!