USU Students Bid Farewell to Temporary Campus Sculpture 'A Restless Spell'

Utah State Today regularly highlights work created by the talented student journalists at Utah State University. The following story was published in The Utah Statesman prior to its inclusion in Utah State Today.

Over 100 Utah State University students gathered at the previous site of A Restless Spell on Sunday night for a candlelight vigil in its honor. Braving the 30-degree weather, they commemorated the dearly departed sculpture through song, sticky notes and battery-powered candles.

“Tonight, we are gathered here to remember — to remember what was once called a taste of childhood,” said Elliot Nebeker, the USU junior who organized the vigil.

On Oct. 13, this group of students had their campus and their lives changed as an excavator took down A Restless Spell, a sculpture that was located near the entrance of the library.

Also known as the “stick house,” A Restless Spell was installed on campus in September 2018. The sculpture, made of 30,000 pounds of willow tree saplings, was intended to be temporary and was expected to last about two years.

Nebeker opened the vigil with a presentation to introduce A Restless Spell and its creator, Patrick Dougherty, an artist from North Carolina who worked with over 100 volunteers to install the sculpture on campus.

Nebeker invited Dougherty to attend the vigil, but he was tied up working on another sculpture in New Hampshire. He did send a message to Nebeker, conveying his thanks to all who attended the memorial.

“It was a pleasure to be on your campus and to have students help with the effort,” Dougherty wrote in an email to Nebeker. “My son Sam, who helped with the project, also sends his best regards. We think the work on your campus was one of our best.”

After the presentation, attendees were invited to share their memories and express their feelings on an open mic. A few students shared some poetry.

Bryce von Niederhausern performed an original poem: “The Restless Spell / The Restless Spell / The only thing that saved me from hell / Now I miss you / Now I feel blue / We lost a friend / Something I cannot mend / A Restless Spell / A Restless Spell.”

After the open mic closed, the group migrated over to a piano at the entrance of the library for a musical number from junior Preston Tangren.

Tangren’s first idea was to do a parody of “More Than A Woman” by the Bee Gees, changing the words to “More Than A Stick House.” Instead, he went for a cover of The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather,” which he prepared the night before the vigil.

“Not necessarily a downgrade, but something I was more familiar with, something that people could sing along to,” he said.

And people did sing along, stumbling a bit over Tangren’s lyrical changes: “Cause it’s too cold / For you here / And now, so let me hold / Both your hands in the holes of the stick house.”

After Tangren’s musical number, the crowd moved to circle around the site of the fallen sculpture. After a moment of silence, one voice began to sing the opening lines to “Hey Jude.”

Everyone joined in, waving their candles in the air. “Na, na, na, nananana, nananana, stick house.”

After a couple more songs and some call-and-response chants — “When I say restless, you say spell!” — the vigil ended. Candles on the ground outlined the resting place of the stick house, a patch of dirt where “a taste of childhood” once stood.

Though students are mourning the seemingly sudden loss of the sculpture, it had been up for two years longer than intended, and it was starting to show.

Laura Gelfand was the head of the Department of Art + Design when A Restless Spell was installed. She has been “writing to people like mad” trying to get it to come down for the last two years. It no longer looked the way it was supposed to, and it was starting to seem like a safety hazard to her.

“It’s nice that it lasted longer, but it was definitely time for it to come down,” Gelfand said. “It had started to seem incredibly — it just seemed really disrespectful to the artist and his work to leave it up when it no longer looked like it was supposed to.”

Gelfand said Dougherty advised them to take A Restless Spell down during the summer when students aren’t around. Instead, the sculpture was brought down on a Thursday morning in the middle of fall semester. Though it wasn’t done at the most inconspicuous time, it was still a relief for Gelfand when the sculpture came down.

To Gelfand, the temporary nature of the sculpture is “charming and enticing,” and keeping it up would be disrespectful to the artist’s wishes.

“It incorporates the construction of it into the artwork itself and then also incorporates its own destruction,” Gelfand said. “And work like that — it’s really not meant to stay forever.”

Nothing lasts forever, especially temporary stick houses. Even so, students are still sad to see the sculpture go.

Megan Wilson has been at USU for seven years and saw the rise and fall of A Restless Spell. They attended the vigil because they thought it was funny, but they were also “pretty bummed” the sculpture had to come down.

“My siblings came and saw it for the first time a few days before they knocked it down, and to see them so delighted by it was really sweet,” Wilson said. “I’m glad they got to see it before it disappeared.”

Nebeker was inspired to hold Sunday’s vigil by another held earlier this month at the Rancherito’s in Provo. He and his friends joked about one-upping it, which he feels they “definitely did.” He said the night couldn’t have gone better.

“I’m so happy with it,” Nebeker said. “I love people. It was so fun to hear what people had to say on the open mic, and at the vigil, people just started singing. That was hilarious. I was very, very happy about it.”