New “Stick Sculpture” in McBryde Garden

NTBG Offers Preview and Reception on November 21 

National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) has announced that tickets are now on sale for a “preview party” of environmental art created by renowned artist Patrick Dougherty. The November 21 “meet the artist” reception will offer live music by the Kaua‘i Community College Jazz band and an assortment of wine, beverages, and pupus by the Greenery Café. The late afternoon event begins with a scenic ride from the Southshore Visitors Center into the Lāwa‘i Valley, offering the chance to experience the new Biodiversity Trail before journeying deeper into the McBryde Garden.

The preview wraps up three weeks of Dougherty’s time at NTBG working with staff and volunteers from the Kaua‘i community in the “Big Valley” area of McBryde Garden. Using plant materials gathered from the garden and scaffolding to erect the tall sculpture, Dougherty will have created a one-of-a-kind artistic piece that will naturally decompose over time.

Space is limited and tickets are being sold in advance online at ntbg.brownpapertickets.com or at the Visitors Center Gift Shop for this event. Garden members are invited to receive a substantial discount by purchasing their tickets directly from NTBG’s Development Office at (808) 332-7324, ext. 211.

Patrick Dougherty has spent more than three decades creating 250 “stickwork” sculptures across North America and around the world from Italy, France, and Ireland to Australia, Japan, and South Korea. He has previously made sculptures on O‘ahu and Maui but the NTBG installation is his first on Kaua‘i.

These sculptures, sometimes likened to three-dimensional pencil drawings, evoke a sense of the familiar yet feel mythical and other world-like, expressing the movement of water, wind, and air through surfaces built of meticulously arranged sticks and branches.

National Tropical Botanical Garden (www.ntbg.org) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental institution with nearly 2,000 acres of gardens and preserves in Hawai‘i and Florida. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2014, the institution’s mission is to enrich life through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education by perpetuating the survival of plants, ecosystems, and cultural knowledge of tropical regions. NTBG is supported primarily through donations and grants.

stick sculptor Patrick Dougherty.
Photo by David C. Calicchio