I love Copper!

Native Copper photo by “Jonathan Zander (Digon3)"

Out of all the many different materials I have used in arts & craft work over the years, I think copper is in the top 2 or 3. I particularly like it for Yard Art. It's quite malleable, and it takes on a wonderful verdigris patina over time outdoors. Copper is one of the few metals to occur naturally as an un-compounded metal, and it has a history of use at least 10,000 years old.

Years ago I rented an office in the Historic District of Annapolis, and the window by my desk looked out over a wonderful old copper roof. Some of the older boats in the harbor even had copper plate on the lower parts of their hulls to repel barnacles. Few can afford copper roofing today, and even copper gutters and downspouts now cost a small fortune. Plus I suppose boat hulls today are probably painted with something to kill barnacles.

Meanwhile in doing my genealogy research, I came across this wonderful copper statue dedicated to the copper miners in Arizona.




I love this plaque on the statue base:

Summer Palace at the Morris Arboretum

NC artist Patrick Dougherty has just completed this 25 foot tall sculpture "Summer Palace" at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. According to the press release by the arboretum, the tractor-trailer size loads of sticks and saplings to build the sculpture were gathered locally just prior to the 3 week installation process. The thousands of saplings (a mix of willow, dogwood, cherry, ash and maple) had to be fresh and supple because Dougherty's sculptures are designed and executed without the use of nails or other supportive hardware.

I was not familiar with this artist so I followed links to his some of his other work (Stickworks). The imagination, scale, and sense of movement in his sculptures is awesome! According to his own blog, the sapling sculptures have a life of 2 years before they are destroyed by agreement. During the last two decades, he has built over 150 works throughout the United States, Europe and Asia using the primitive techniques of building with tree saplings.

Sculpture in the Parklands (in Ireland) has a great series of photos showing the process of building one of his sculptures and I highly encourage you to check them out! I also particularly liked the pieces lighted at night at the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Denver.