Dougherty News
The future site of 'stickwork' artist Patrick Dougherty's site specific sculpture for Wheaton College.
Greetings and a Warm Welcome Back to All!
I write to inform you of an exciting project that will begin on campus one week from today. Internationally known sculptor Patrick Dougherty arrives on September 2, to begin a three-week residency, resulting in an outdoor, site-specific work of art on Wheaton’s campus. The sculpture will be located adjacent to Watson Fine Arts at the head of Peacock Pond directly across from the visitors parking lot. The piece will be "unveiled" and dedicated prior to the artist's lecture on Friday, September 19 at 7 p.m., in Weber Theatre, Watson Fine Arts. The residency program is sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History and funded by Celeste Gottesman Bartos '35 Fund for the Visual Arts and the Master Class in the Visual Arts Fund within the Evelyn Danzig Haas '39 Visiting Artists Program.
A critical component of the project will be the involvement of a crew of student volunteers from four classes- Public Art and Popular Imagination, a first-year seminar taught by Tripp Evans; Cross Training: Drawing/Design, a first-year seminar taught by Claudia Fieo; and Sculpture I and Three-Dimensional Design, advance studio art courses taught by Tim Cunard.
The artist will work 8 hours per day, Monday through Friday, accompanied by teams of 2-4 students working in 2-hour shifts who will assist in the creation of the sculpture. For a couple of weeks, the area will look a bit like a true construction site complete with scaffolding, ladders and tools abound. You may notice the traffic slowing down a bit, as people driving by on Rt. 123 hesitate to observe what is going on. Please feel free to come by and observe the process, after all, this will belong to all of us for at least two years! I encourage you to investigate Patrick Dougherty’s website at www.stickwork.net to get a sense of the artists work and vision.
Please get in touch with me or Professor Tripp Evans at revans@wheatoncollege.edu, with any questions or comments you may have about the project.
Kind regards,
Betsy Cronin (bcronin@wheatoncollege.edu)
Manager, Arts Events and Publicity
Coordinator, Evelyn Danzig Haas '39 Visiting Artist Program and Arts in the City