Day 16 at The Rambles

Patrick officially finished the sculpture at a "last stick" ceremony today when he also christened our sculpture The Rambles, as in "Let's go to the Florence Griswold Museum and picnic down by The Rambles" or "Kids really enjoy running around The Rambles by the river." Rather than signing his work in a traditional way, Patrick took the last stick and chomped down on it with his teeth, leaving a permanent, personal record, before weaving it into the structure.

When the work was finished Patrick took off his work gloves for all the volunteers to sign. If you were a volunteer on the project you'll soon be receiving word about an upcoming volunteer appreciation dinner where you'll be able to sign the gloves too. The gloves will be on display in the Museum through October, at which point they'll be returned to Patrick's studio.

Day 15

After much concern about the weather and the availability of sticks over the past three weeks, we hear the good news from Patrick today that his sculpture will not only be done on time, but probably a little early tomorrow. In fact, they've been breaking down and moving the scaffolding away quite a bit as the work day draws to a close. I can see from my office window that the grounds crew here at the Museum are sprucing up the worksite as I type. There's sure to be a final push tomorrow to put the finishing touches on the project as a whole.

In eager anticipation of our sculpture's completion, we've installed an exhibition inside the Museum that shows many photographs of Patrick's other work, as well as models, sketches and videos. This too comes a little bit earlier than we'd planned and will coincide with the opening of the Lyme in Mind exhibition this weekend. Hopefully the many reporters, photographers, and news teams that visited the site today will help spread the word about this fantastic project and draw many many visitors to our Midsummer Festival next weekend. Fingers crossed that when I report in tomorrow our sculpture will have been given a proper name.

Day 14

There's been speculation for days as to what the sculpture will be titled. Visitors and staff alike are waiting to hear what sort of word play Patrick will employ. Our resident wordsmith and Director of Education and Outreach David Rau cleverly came up with "A Ruin with a View" taking into account both the theme of ruin that Patrick's been playing on, as well as the sculpture's prime location on the Lieutenant River (I wonder what the kayakers thought as they paddled by today...). My idea is to incorporate the word "Sub-Lyme" which is how the photographer Walker Evans used to refer to the area where he lived, in the lush far reaches of Lyme. I think it's great material for the kind of punning titles Patrick sometimes gives his sculptures. So many landscape painters, garden designers, and architects utilized elements of the beautiful and the sublime (sublyme?) in their work, in much the same way that Patrick is doing here. We all look forward to hearing the final title.

Day 13

With only three more work days left on the project, the crew was out again today harvesting more sticks and saplings. The "floorplan" of the sculpture seems more and more complex each hour, with walls forming today in places where there were only columns yesterday. Many devoted volunteers have been returning to continue working on "their" part of the sculpture, taking real pride in ownership of their piece of the overall project. Pauline and Bob Knoll were back for the third time today, bringing their dog Gracie along. Gracie watched the process unfold as if it was a doggie dream house being built just for her.

Day 12

The project is growing by leaps and bounds now. There was a remarkable difference between the state of the sculpture on Friday afternoon and the current state, at the end of Monday's work day. This video alternates between the Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon views. In it, you can see the tall sticks and saplings which had previously stuck straight up in the air have begun to curve over and are being worked into the overall sculpture. It's a little bit like taming unruly hair, but on a much larger scale. Patrick made a similar analogy today, describing the way he was working the sticks together, using one to hold back the rest, like a barrette.

Day 11

Just when you think a part of the sculpture is finished, the crew drags the scaffolding back and utterly changes the appearance again. Yesterday's work on the columns presented a very regular row of uprights when the work began this morning (see photo above) but by the end of the day today things were looking much different. It is a ruin, after all, and those columns maybe seemed a little too new. Today they began to transform into an arcade of sorts, with Patrick's assistant Mike working taller saplings into curved forms springing from one column to the next. Work is finished for another week, but come by the Museum over the weekend to take in the progress. We've posted a sign and informational brochures outside to help explain what's going on.

Day 10

There was a lot of talk about "verticality" around the stickwork project today. Traditional columns have fluting carved into them that emphasizes the length of the column. It's really a bit of optical illusion that the Greeks thought up to give their architecture a more monumental, soaring, appearance. Patrick worked particularly on trying to make his stickwork columns look less like they'd been wrapped up in vines and sticks and more like the vines were becoming the columns. Patrick fashioned an example so that our crew of volunteers could work on additional columns on their own. In the finished (or more finished) versions you can see how the smaller diameter sticks, packed tightly together, give the illusion of fluting and therefore the illusion of verticality as well.