Patrick Dougherty | James Florio: Sticks

James Florio's exquisite black-and-white photography of sixteen important sculptural projects by Patrick Dougherty across the US. One of today’s most admired living sculptors, Patrick Dougherty composes with nature—wielding saplings and sticks 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, to ultimately deliver a thoughtful and profound interpretation. This project was inspired by Dougherty’s and Florio’s connection to Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana, where Dougherty has crafted sculptures from local willows, and where Florio has photographed the art and wild lands over many years. Dougherty’s first commission at Tippet Rise, Daydreams, was completed in 2015. He subsequently returned to the art center in 2022 to make a companion piece for this work. At the heart of both pieces is a nineteenth-century schoolhouse reproduction. The new work, Cursive Takes a Holiday (2022), adds an installation of intertwining branches to the outside of the schoolhouse, creating a series of circular spaces that visitors can step inside. Daydreams features woven branches that connect the indoors to the outdoors. In addition to thoughtful photographs, this book features information about the commission, creation, installation, and community engagement of Dougherty's work, along with essays about his practice, influence, and legacy.

About the Author :
James Florio is a Montana-based photographer focused on the built environment and the life surrounding it. He works slowly whenever possible, visiting a place repeatedly to gain a greater understanding of it and to deliver a thoughtful and profound interpretation. He is currently working on several long-term projects documenting the unique changes of nature, climate, and time on architecture and landscapes. Using the camera as a means to investigate, understand, and document, working both with digital and film, he prefers to work with medium or large format film for its depth and deliberation. Born in Oklahoma, Patrick Dougherty (b. 1945) was raised in North Carolina. 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. In 1982, his first work, Maple Body Wrap, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artists’ Exhibition, sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of Art. In the following year, he had his first one-person show entitled, Waitin’ It Out in Maple at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 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. He has received numerous awards, including the 2011 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.

Review :
There's a deeper conversation happening here, about how we experience art. Dougherty's work is meant to be walked through, touched, lived in. But for most people, their interaction with these pieces will be through photographs. Florio's images don't just document, they interpret, offering a perspective that makes the viewer feel like they're stepping inside the structures rather than just looking at them. -- Viewfinder Chronicles (April 2025)