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Forest Technology | November 2024

Patrick Dougherty: Rooted in Nature

Childhood Dreams

Patrick Dougherty’s art career is rooted in his fascination with nature and primitive building techniques.

Patrick Dougherty
Biltmore

Born in Oklahoma in 1945 and raised in North Carolina, Dougherty first pursued traditional academics, earning degrees in English and Health Administration. However, his return to North Carolina to study art history and sculpture sparked a desire to create works of art utilizing natural materials, particularly tree saplings. Combining this desire with his carpentry skills, Dougherty began crafting unique, large-scale sculptures that organically blend into their environments.

Over 40 years, Dougherty has created more than 330 of these site-specific installations, ranging from delicate woven structures to monumental, immersive works. His art style has earned him grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and fellowships from the Henry Moore Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2023, Dougherty was awarded North Carolina’s highest civilian honor in Fine Arts.

Dougherty’s work is visually striking and challenges the conventional boundaries of sculpture. His installations encourage viewers to reconnect with nature and engage with the world around us.

We learned more about his art, his inspirations and what he hopes to portray with his sculptures during a recent interview. Listen below.

The Interview

You can learn more about Patrick’s work by visiting his website: stickwork.net

Tree Circus
Tree Circus (2017) Blackfoot Pathways Sculpture in the Wild, Lincoln, MT. Photos: Shanenon Starrett
Making the Birds Proud
Making the Birds Proud (2021) Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah GA. Photo: DJ Hellerman
Making the Birds Proud
Head Over Heels
Head Over Heels (2017) Orenco Park, City of Hillsboro, OR. Photo: Valerie Otani
Grand Central
Grand Central (2020) McKee Botanical Garden, Vero Beach, FL. Photos: Bob Joy
Grand Central
Far Flung
Far Flung (2018) Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH Photo: Robert A. Flischel
Fancy's Bower
Fancy’s Bower (2017) Montreal Botanical Garden, Montreal, QB, Canada Photo: Pierre Charbonneau
Fancy's Bower
Childhood Dreams
Childhood Dreams (2007) Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, AZ. Photo: Adam Rodriguez
Call of the Wild
Call of the Wild (2002) Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA. Photo: Duncan Price
Call of the Wild
A Waltz in the Woods
A Waltz in the Woods (2015) Morris Arboretum of UPA, Philadelphia, PA. Photos: Rob Cardillo

*All images and information are © Patrick Dougherty unless otherwise stated.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Public Health Landscape or Valent BioSciences, LLC.

More from Forest Technology | November 2024

Jacques Régnière: Budworm to BioSIM

Jacques Régnière, born in Quebec City, has dedicated over four decades to advancing our understanding of forest pests and protecting our global forests. Earning his bachelor’s degree in biology from Laval University and a Ph.D. in insect ecology and biomathematics from North Carolina State University, Régnière began his career at the Canadian Forest Service in 1980, where he served until his retirement in 2024.

Throughout his distinguished career, Régnière focused on pressing issues in forest ecology, notably the population dynamics of the spruce budworm, mountain pine beetle, and spongy moth. His work in quantitative ecology has influenced pest management practices and provided a better understanding of climate change’s impact on invasive species and forest health.

Purdue launches new AI-based global forest mapping project

Purdue University’s Jingjing Liang has received a two-year, $870,000 grant from the World Resources Institute to map global forest carbon accumulation rates.

“To accurately capture the carbon accumulation rates of forested ecosystems across the world has always been a challenging task, mostly because doing so requires lots of ground-sourced data, and currently such data are very limited to the scientific community,” said Liang, an associate professor of quantitative forest ecology and co-director of the Forest Advanced Computing and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

“This task is considerably more challenging than mapping carbon emissions from forest loss,” said Nancy Harris, research director of the Land & Carbon Lab at the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. “With emissions, there’s a clear signal in satellite imagery when trees are cut, leading to a big drop in forest carbon stocks and a relatively abrupt pulse of emissions to the atmosphere. With sequestration, forests accumulate carbon gradually and nonlinearly.”

The Role of Technology in Forest Management

In Brazil’s Pará region, new roads are cutting through the pristine Amazon rainforest, opening up once-untouched areas to human activities. Expansive stretches of lush greenery are vanishing at an alarming pace, yielding to barren patches and freshly cleared land.

Meanwhile, far into space, the European Space Agency captures high-resolution satellite images of the region that unveil an important pattern: deforestation occurs predominantly near these newly constructed roads.

Back in 2016, it sparked a question: what if there were a tool to monitor these roads and forecast potential deforestation areas? Not long after PrevisIA was born.

In 2021, Microsoft with Vale Fund and the Amazon Institute for Man and the Environment (Imazon) developed a new AI tool called PrevisIA, to predict deforestation hotspots in the Amazon. Using satellite imagery from the European Space Agency and an algorithm developed by Imazon, the tool produces heat maps showing the most exposed conservation areas, Indigenous lands, and other settlements, along with rankings for states and municipalities.

Single-Photon Lidar

The Canadian Institute of Forestry in partnership with the Canadian Wood Fibre Centre and other organizations are currently researching the potential of single photon lidar for Ontario’s
Enhanced Forest Resource Inventory (EFI) at the Petawawa Research Forest (PRF).

What is Lidar?

A lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors will emit light pulses that will reflect or bounce off objects, such as standing trees or the ground. This measures the time of return and the distance that each pulse travels. The result is highly detailed 3-D point clouds of the forest environment.