The
talented North Carolina-based artist Patrick Dougherty has earned an
international reputation for weaving tree saplings into substantial, swirling
forms that look like bird nests as high as 40 feet. His elegant sculptures are transitory,
owning to the nature of the materials used, and break down after a year or two
in the wild. Patrick has post-graduate in Hospital and Health Administration,
and he started studying art history and sculpture at the University of North
Carolina, where he started learning about basic techniques of building, and
applying his carpentry abilities with his deep fondness of nature ongoing to
experiment with tree saplings as construction material. Patrick Dougherty first
artwork was his house. When he was collecting fallen branches, rocks and old
timber, Dougherty built a villa where he still lives with his wife and son. By
the way, his house is his only eternal work. So more than thirty years, he has
built more than 230 of such works that have been seen worldwide from Scotland
to Japan to Brussels, and all over the United States.