BOYLSTON, Mass. — The towering, whimsical shapes Patrick Dougherty creates by twisting and weaving sticks together have gained him an international following. Now, the artist who lives in a log cabin near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is back in New England to build two more of his almost cartoon-like stick sculptures.

Since the early 1980s, Dougherty has constructed more than 270 installations around the globe, from Chiba, Japan, and Melbourne, Australia, to Honolulu, Los Angeles and Waco, Texas.

“A good sculpture is something that causes people to have personal associations,” Dougherty said in a recent interview. “It sparks all kinds of feelings about things in your own life.”

His fans agree. They often say his installations – soaring as high as 30 feet – conjure images of the Garden of Eden, a bird’s nest or a walk in the woods.

On Thursday, the artist’s newest installation was set to be unveiled at the 132-acre Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts, where visitors can walk the bucolic grounds that border the Wachusett Reservoir and view the sculpture.

A second installation was commissioned by the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, where Dougherty will be the artist in residence. Construction there is set to begin Sept. 4.

“The subtleties and nuances of each site take a while to understand,” Dougherty said, describing his creative process. “You want to build a piece that seems sympathetic and something that people feel really compelled by.”

Dubbed “The Wild Rumpus,” the installation at Tower Hill was inspired by wind whipping through four hilltop spires on the grounds. A “flying wall,” as Dougherty calls it, will weave through the spires with varying levels of height and width, reaching 12 feet toward the sky.

In many ways, Dougherty’s success at stick weaving happened by chance.

He began working in the medium to repurpose discarded saplings along highways and beneath power lines that were left by maintenance crews. He said his work pays homage to the role of sticks in human culture: a child’s affinity for play with sticks, or a tribute to our hunter-gatherer past.

“Sticks have an honored tradition in human development,” he said. “There are still so many cultures around the world that use sticks for basket weaving, fishing and craft traditions.”