Just trying to catch up here. We had a wonderful week finishing up the Patrick Dougherty piece. With incredible help from our dear friend James, Ellen's mother Anita, my sister Barbara, and Ellen we got done a week early. Patrick was very open to suggestions and the piece evolved very organically. On the second day we got pretty far down the road with a large extension of the piece in our bedroom and we decided on day 3 that it was too much and we took out a big section of it (in the transom) and now we have the worlds largest Christmas wreath!
After we finished up the main piece above the dining canopy Patrick turned his attention to the piece at the entry landing. The original plan was for the left side of the big swirl in the living room to go up into the upstairs hall, over the top of the main stairwell, down into the slot in the floor in the library and through the entry to the landing. After playing with this for quite a while we all decided it was just too literal and it would overwhelm the space. Patrick started playing with ways for different parts of the piece to simply "point" at each other and make more figurative connections. We wanted the piece to interact with the railing done by Marc Maiorana and I was a little skeptical how Patrick was going to be able to get a substantial enough mass at the landing without any attachment points. He quickly allayed my fears and made an amazing form by using very long saplings and wedging the sticks against the rail and the paneling for a VERY sturdy foundation.
The aftermath was a little scary. It looked like a bomb went off in the house.
Because we finished early and had a ton of saplings left Patrick suggested that Ellen, James, and I make our own sculpture. We were completely game. He said he often starts with beginners by making a sort of stick base wall and then building on that. He had us go in the carport and just start weaving sticks over and under to make a "wall" that was about 8'x17'.
Patrick asked us what we wanted to do with our creation and my first notion was to use it as part of our deer fence and so the four of us carted it out by the driveway to put it into place. i thought it looked fabulous and Ellen completely vetoed it so we decided to put it against the north wall of the carport and it was like it was made for the space! Exactly the right length. We then got to work weaving our spirals while Patrick looked on quite amused.
our friend Cici showed up and joined in the fun.
Patrick was feeling pretty good about his job security but we were pretty proud of our efforts.
Our filmmaker friends Kenny and Penelope who are making a documentary about Patrick called Bending Sticks were on hand to film all the activity and while we were joking around Penelope came up with the suggestion of naming the main piece inside Walkabout and everyone agreed that was a great name. Here are some images of the finished piece--
Note the section that comes through the opening in the wall in the bedroom at the rear of the image.
Many many thanks to all of our helpers and especially to Patrick for bring this singularly wonderful creation into our home which we will enjoy for many many years.
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