Environmental artist Patrick Dougherty to launch fall Visiting Artist Lecture Series Sept. 14

Environmental artist Patrick Dougherty has earned an international reputation for weaving whimsical, freeform installations from sticks, branches and saplings.

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, Dougherty will launch the fall Visiting Artist Lecture Series, sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The talk is free and open to the public and takes place in Steinberg Auditorium, located in Steinberg Hall, near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. For more information, call (314) 935-9347.

Since the early 1980s, Dougherty has combined masterly carpentry skills with an appreciation for primitive building techniques to create elegant, sinuous installations that suggest fairy tales and childhood tree houses as well as the basic human need for shelter.

Using saplings as his principal construction material, the “Stick Man,” as he is sometimes known, has gradually expanded his practice from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumentally scaled environments that require saplings by the truckloads. In the last decade alone Dougherty has built more than 100 works throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

The Visiting Artist Lectures Series will continue Sept. 28 with T.L. Solien, associate professor of painting at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Subsequent speakers include photographer Phyllis Galembo (Oct. 19); graphic designer Michael Mabry (Oct. 27) and painter Helene Aylon (Nov. 16).