This is week two of three of the sculpture project at Saint John’s University.
I went back on Friday and helped with the second step of the project, which was the stripping of the saplings. Three days of gathering willow and ironwood and three days of stripping the leaves from the branches. At left, our ironwood collection.
It had rained just a tiny bit that morning, which it turns out helps make the process less allery-aggravating and also makes the leaves come off easier. There was a good group of volunteers on the 8-10 a.m. shift and we got a lot of bundles stripped.
I was also surprised how quickly the structure was coming together. Quite a few ironwood saplings had been driven into the ground the day before and already a group of guys was starting to bend and tie them into position (I spent some time on my shift tamping in more soil around the base of each 3-branch cluster).
Before the day began, Patrick Dougherty showed us his model, four white paper structures in a box. I was surprised how figurative the plan is, although Dougherty often does creatures and houses. These figures are based on Stella Maris Chapel, a small steepled chapel on the banks of Lake Sagatagan, behind the university.
When we began work on Friday, things looked like this:
Here is how it looked today (three workdays later) from the road as I was driving home from work.
It’s only Day 8… imagine what Day 21 will look like!