Patrick Dougherty | James Florio: Sticks

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One of today’s most admired living sculptors, Patrick Dougherty wields sticks and saplings to build monumental structures that echo, play, and tussle with the land. James Florio is a Montana-based photographer focused on the built environment and the life surrounding it. He works slowly, visiting a place repeatedly to gain a greater understanding of it, ultimately delivering a thoughtful and profound interpretation. Sticks was inspired by both artists’ connections to Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, MT, where Dougherty has crafted work from local willows and where Florio has photographed the art and wild lands for several years.

Daydreams, Dougherty’s first commission at Tippet Rise, was completed in 2015; he subsequently returned to the center in 2022 to make a companion piece. At the heart of both sculptures is a reproduction of a nineteenth-century schoolhouse. The 2022 work, Cursive Takes a Holiday, adds an installation of intertwining branches to the structure’s exterior, creating a series of circular spaces that visitors can enter and explore.

Sticks features sixteen of Dougherty’s projects from across the US, all exquisitely photographed in black and white by Florio. This volume includes an essay by poet Kate Farrell and a conversation between Florio and Dougherty, moderated by Jean McLaughlin, that delves into some of the questions at the heart of the book: What does it mean to be a site-specific sculptor whose work is experienced most often through images? As a photographer, how does one think about documenting the work of another artist, particularly when the work is ephemeral and the images made will be the lasting record of its existence?

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One of today’s most admired living sculptors, Patrick Dougherty wields sticks and saplings to build monumental structures that echo, play, and tussle with the land. James Florio is a Montana-based photographer focused on the built environment and the life surrounding it. He works slowly, visiting a place repeatedly to gain a greater understanding of it, ultimately delivering a thoughtful and profound interpretation. Sticks was inspired by both artists’ connections to Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, MT, where Dougherty has crafted work from local willows and where Florio has photographed the art and wild lands for several years.

Daydreams, Dougherty’s first commission at Tippet Rise, was completed in 2015; he subsequently returned to the center in 2022 to make a companion piece. At the heart of both sculptures is a reproduction of a nineteenth-century schoolhouse. The 2022 work, Cursive Takes a Holiday, adds an installation of intertwining branches to the structure’s exterior, creating a series of circular spaces that visitors can enter and explore.

Sticks features sixteen of Dougherty’s projects from across the US, all exquisitely photographed in black and white by Florio. This volume includes an essay by poet Kate Farrell and a conversation between Florio and Dougherty, moderated by Jean McLaughlin, that delves into some of the questions at the heart of the book: What does it mean to be a site-specific sculptor whose work is experienced most often through images? As a photographer, how does one think about documenting the work of another artist, particularly when the work is ephemeral and the images made will be the lasting record of its existence?

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  • Artwork by Patrick Dougherty
    Photography by James Florio
    Text by Kate Farrell
    Conversation with Jean McLaughlin

    Hardcover
    10.2 x 13.6 inches
    244 pages / 98 images
    Trade ISBN: 9798890181015
    Signed ISBN: 9798890181022 (signed by both Dougherty and Florio)

    Co-published with Tippet Rise Art Center

  • Patrick Dougherty (b. 1945, Oklahoma) was raised in North Carolina, where he lives and works today. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina in 1967 and an M.A. in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Iowa in 1969. Later, he returned to the University of North Carolina to study art history and sculpture. Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, Patrick began to learn more about primitive techniques of building and to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. His work quickly evolved from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumental scale environmental works, which required saplings by the truckloads. Over the last thirty-some years, he has built over 300 of these works, and become internationally acclaimed. His sculpture has been seen worldwide—from Scotland to Japan to Brussels, and all over the United States. The artist has received numerous awards, including the Factor Prize for Southern Art, North Carolina Artist Fellowship Award, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, Japan-US Creative Arts Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

    James Florio is a Montana-based photographer focused on the built environment and the life surrounding it. Using the camera as a means to investigate, understand, and document, he works primarily with large format film for its depth and deliberation. In 2022 he was awarded the Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award.