‘Pilgrimage’: BRAHM’s latest art exhibit featuring Patrick Dougherty - Published November 21, 2025

Installation View, Patrick Dougherty: Pilgrimage (November 15, 2025 - May 17, 2026), Blowing Rock Art & History Museum. Photo: Josh White

Story Written by: Ashton Ahart

Tightly bundled together in intricate patterns and shapes, a new sculpture exhibit weaves its way through the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum. The exhibits’ featured artist, Patrick Dougherty, incorporates pieces made entirely out of sticks, a wall of well-used gloves and photos of past works. The exhibit opened on Saturday and will run until May 17, 2026. 

“Patrick desired to have this exhibition in a season that is typically more slower for tourism up here in the mountains with the cold and the snow, because he believed that it would be a great time to welcome people to the high country and show how much of a cultural destination we are in all seasons,” said Asher Davidson, the marketing and communications coordinator at BRAHM.

According to his website, Dougherty is a “stick sculpture artist” and has been working in the industry for 40-plus years, starting his career in 1985. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1967 and has work featured across the United States. 

His previous works include large outdoor sculptures and buildings made entirely out of sticks. BRAHM’s showing of “Pilgrimage” will be Dougherty’s premier exhibition with indoor pieces and smaller-scale sculptures made out of sticks.

“They tell a kind of classic tale where you look into the forest and a face looks back at you as some personification of nature itself,” Dougherty said. “I always say that I had to figure out what birds and beavers already know; sticks have an infuriating tendency to tangle.”