Life as Art:Artistic Oddities

Artistic creations often transform into strange oddities and niche art installations. One prime example is North Carolina’s Patrick Dougherty, a sapling sculptor. At seventy-seven, Dougherty merges his carpentry skills and love for nature by constructing monumental art installations using organic materials, primarily sticks of various sizes and types. By organizing and weaving sticks in a uniform direction, he has created over 300 projects worldwide, including castles, mazes, and cannon-like villages. His project, Tree Circus, crafted mainly from willow and alder, features a whimsical, circular courtyard that evokes images from a Hobbit fairytale or Lord of the Rings, with towering trees forming double-walled, ten-chamber structures, five of which are open to the sky, mirroring the tall surrounding Ponderosa Pines.

Another notable fiber artist, Jen Isbell from Joshua Tree, California, utilizes dried bundles of dead foliage to create organic “tumbleweed” chandeliers. Isbell founded her company, Sand+Suede, and began selling her creations nationwide, catering primarily to clients who favor rustic and bohemian-style decor. Harvesting tumbleweeds, a challenging task due to their prickly nature, requires protective gloves and long sleeved clothing. Isbell sources her materials from culverts, ravines, highway underpasses, and dry lakebeds in Joshua Tree, assembling the tumbleweeds with electrical components in her studio. The final products are pendant lights ranging from 2 to 6 feet in diameter, sold to homeowners, restaurants, and various commercial venues.

Charles Arnoldi has been incorporating actual tree branches as compositional elements in his artwork since the 1970s. Eschewing traditional canvases, Arnoldi uses tree branches to enhance depth and color, creating powerful and expressionistic compositions. It’s fascinating how the simple act of painting and assembling branches can transform into highly sought-after art pieces. His work is featured in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

These artists not only challenge our perceptions of what can be considered art materials but also highlight the importance of sustainability and ecological consciousness in contemporary art. By repurposing natural elements, they contribute to a dialogue about the environment and our interaction with it, encouraging viewers to see the beauty and innovation in everyday surroundings. Through their innovative uses of natural materials, these type of artists demonstrate that art is not just an aesthetic pursuit but a transformative one that can influence perception and challenge societal norms.