Coined by scholar Joseph Campbell, “The Hero’s Journey” is a familiar trope in myths and stories – a hero sets out on an adventure, encounters setbacks, is transformed and eventually returns home.

“It’s a story that’s as old as humanity,” said John Magnan.

Using the same title, the latest project of the Mattapoisett sculptor looks at that journey through the scope of patients who undergo clinical trials and the community that surrounds them.

Commissioned by Eli Lilly and Company, a multinational pharmaceutical company based in Indiana, Magnan is creating three elaborate structures of wood and light that incorporate the journeys of patients and the greater clinical drug trial community to raise awareness.

“What’s important about clinical trials is that’s how drugs get approved. We can’t get new medicines out there healing people unless we test it on people,” Magnan said. “I knew art could inspire people to look into clinical trials and potentially take action and also be used to validate and honor the patient experience.”

A former National Security Agency mathematician, Magnan took an early retirement to study art at UMass Dartmouth. He describes himself as a “lifelong woodworker,” and said DIY was the norm in the Magnan household.

“I grew up thinking everybody did everything for themselves,” he said.

In graduate school, Magnan built on the skills he’d learned in childhood, focusing on wooden sculpture.

He’s since been commissioned to create pieces for corporations, organizations, hospitals and residences. Magnan’s work can be seen in the form of a school of fish swimming through the Buzzards Bay Coalition’s New Bedford headquarters, in a yoga form overlooking a healing garden at the Southcoast Centers for Cancer Care, as well as an installation at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

He said each piece is a “visual exploration” of his subjects’ identities.

“I do work about the human condition,” explained Magnan.

With “The Hero’s Project,” Magnan is creating three wooden cairns with windows that will sit atop lighted bases.

The project also has a crowdsourcing element, something that immediately drew Magnan to the project.

“The art is not finished without the physical participation of the clinical trial community. That really captured my imagination,” he said.

Magnan created 2,000 wooden bricks that will be sent to patients, members of the medical community, caretakers and others through the One Brick, Your Voice campaign, designed by Magnan’s wife Annie Jonas. Participants who request a kit will receive a brick on which to paint, paste, draw or write something related to their experiences with drug trials. The kits will also contain a replica of one of the cairns, made by Jonas, to keep.

Each brick will be fitted into one of the three pieces.

The campaign is scheduled to begin in September, but work on the cairns has already begun. Made of white oak, purple heart and cherry – all from sustainable sources – the pieces have been planned with a mathematician’s precision so they are perfectly symmetrical.

“It’s a major geometry problem,” said Magnan, holding up a diagram.

He wants to make sure the project is just right and increases awareness about clinical drug trials, something he said few people know about. Lilly will use the bricks to publicize the project and the need for patients to participate in trials. There will also be a website and documentary to go along with “The Hero’s Journey.”

For Magnan, setting up a workshop that can accommodate the three pieces as well as carefully fitting and sanding and stippling each piece of the puzzle is a worthwhile labor of love, and one he hopes will help the cause.

“It’s meaningful. It’s hard,” he said. “I love challenging projects. It can make a difference.”