KANSAN
0,2009
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2009
NEWS
13
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Andrew Hoxev/KANSAN
Above: David Cogorno, MFA candidate in sculpture, unloads fresh-cut saplings from a canoe. The team of volunteers harvested saplings around Clinton Lake May 22. Right: Bryan Lloyd, 2009 graduate, helped North Carolina sculptor Patrick Dougherty construct "The Bedazzler," a towering structure of woven saplings and branches standing more than 20 feet tall in front of Spooner Hall. About 10 students and faculty assisted in the project one of more than 200 Dougherty structures around the world.
to dying tree on campus
and built it at the end of May with the help of students
unwanted because the trees were overpopulating.
Ryan said her favorite part of the project was the involvement with the
artist and his creation.
She said most people didn't have the opportunity to be with an artist while he was creating and weren't usually welcomed to tag along.
"Everybody has
some sort of ownership with it," Ryan said. "If that means climbing through an acre of poison ivy, they'll do it. You don't always get to be part of the whole process and there's a great deal of personal satisfaction people get from that."
"The material itself seems to be promotive of a deeper view of mankind."
Carolyn Chinn Lewis, assistant director of the museum, said that the sculpture was expected to stay up about 18-to-24 months, but that it
PATRICK DOUGHERTY Artist
depended on how and when the sculpture deteriorated.
"It's really like a birth and death process of his pieces," Lewis said. "It has its own life cycle and I think we'll know when it's time."
ture had Dutch Elm disease, which also played into the process of life and death. She said the sculpture was a way to pay homage to a dying tree.
Lewis said that the tree beneath the sculp-
Dougherty said his sapling sculptures combined his love for nature and art.
ART AT A GLANCE
WHO: Artist Patrick Dougherty
**WHAT:** "The Bedazzler"
**WHEN:** Now
WHERE: Spooner Hall lawn PROCESS: The sculpture was created around a dying Elm tree using saplings gathered near Clinton Lake.
"The material itself seems to be promotive of a deeper view of mankind," Dougherty said. "There's a desire to be creatures out in the natural world just like any other creature."
— Edited by Kristen Liszewski
Ryan McGeeney/KANSAN