[Scpg] Environmental Artist Patrick Dougherty at SB Botanic Garden

[Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Where There's a Willow There's a Way:
Artist Patrick Dougherty at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Santa Barbara, CA-Internationally acclaimed artist Patrick Dougherty will
be in
residence in February 2005 at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.  On February
8th, Mr. Dougherty will begin constructing an original environmental sculpture
from willows on the Botanic Garden's Meadow Lawn.  Garden visitors will be
able
to watch the artist at work during a three-week period, which will conclude
with the naming of the completed piece on February 26th.  Grand opening for
the
exhibit will be March 5 and 6.  The temporary sculpture will be on display at
the Garden for approximately two years after installation.

Known as the "Stick Man," Mr. Dougherty uses sticks and tree saplings to twist
and weave his materials into immense works of art that stand as statements of
his artistic interplay with the natural world.  Elegant, sinuous, often
whimsical, Mr. Dougherty's work evolved from his childhood wanderings in the
woods of his North Carolina home and evokes memories of treehouses, basic
needs
for nesting and sheltering, and the urge to explore, hide, and play.  Mr.
Dougherty has created over 150 site-specific sculptures throughout the world. 
The Botanic Garden installation will be his first in California's Central
Coast.

Mr. Dougherty says of his work:  "My affinity for trees as a material seems to
come from a childhood spent wandering the forest...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 watched animals work and realized that
saplings have an inherent method of joining-that is, sticks entangle easily. 
This snagging property is the key to working this material into a variety of
large forms."

For more information on Patrick Dougherty's Botanic Garden installation,
please
call 805-569-5766, or njohnson at sbbg.org.