Patrick
Dougherty
"Standing
Room Only"
20' x 40' x 15'
Made of Hardwood Saplings
This image is reproduced with permission of the artist.
From the Fall of 1997 to March 2001 "Standing Room Only" was part of the campus landscape of Western Michigan University and a prominent and inviting image from Waldo Library.
Artist
Patrick Dougherty describes his artistic vision: "I believe one's childhood
shapes his or her choice of materials. Mine came from the underbrush of
my North Carolina home, a place where tree limbs intersected and I could
imagine in the mass of winter twigs all kinds of shapes and speeding lines.
When I turned to sculpture in the mid 1980s, the plentiful saplings along
my driveway became the raw material with which to sketch out a series
of large, gestural forms. It seemed easy to call up the forces of nature
and incorporate the sensations of scoring, sheering and twisting into
the surfaces of my sculptures, a body of work that I have come to think
of as shelters of transition. . . ."
The School of Art features an online tour of current sculpture at Western Michigan University. "Standing Room Only" will be included in the archival tour when its online Exhibit Archive is completed.
