A Role of Different Parts
To many, Rhodes is best recognized as the man who bought 17 Chinese villages for their stone. It’s a small part of the resources that were otherwise lost to the Three Gorges dam project on China’s Yangtze River.
As he explains it, while he was working in that country, he opted to visit the Three Gorges construction site. It was only then that he realized some 1,600 communities – some dating back 3,500 years and containing stone structures and stone streets – would be underwater at the completion of the project.
Click Photo to Enlarge“I thought that was a shame,” he says. “It’s beautiful material and I thought we should try to save and recycle it because it’s part of the world’s patrimony.”
Rhodes came back to the United States to raise money, and then began a two-year negotiation to buy some of the villages. Ultimately, he obtained 17 of them. The rest were dynamited.
He admits the Chinese thought he was crazy, but he has been able to recycle the material, although negotiating their purchase was only the first step in a complicated process.
“They had to be demolished carefully, then processed,” Rhodes says. “These are huge blocks, and we don’t build that way; we build in a veneer system. We have to saw the faces off, being careful to preserve the hand-chiseled marks and the patina. Then we further make it into a usable product by kerfing it for attachment. It’s also no small feat to ship stone 10,000 miles without breaking it, so it has to be crated and packed very carefully.”
SOUVENIRS
Not surprisingly, it’s also a product that isn’t just for anyone. However, Rhodes says it has plenty of appeal for clients he describes as being, “at the very highest end.”
“Certainly, there’s a lot of handling and a lot of cost,” he says. “But when customers have a choice of anything they want in the world, this is not only a beautiful material, but it has an exceptional story, and that story is very powerful.”
He adds that while many of his clients have traveled extensively, typically stone isn’t something you can pack up and bring home. In a way, it’s the ultimate souvenir.
China is not the only country from which Rhodes buys new materials. Many of his projects utilize natural stone from India and Indonesia. In addition, he’s continuing to acquire antique materials from around the world that would otherwise be demolished for an unusual form of stone recycling.
“We have lots of different stone,” Rhodes says. “When it comes to the antique materials we only collect antique granite and antique limestone, but in new materials we work extensively in sandstone, in granite and in hard limestone (also referred to as high-density limestone).”
All along, Rhodes says he’s been trying to help people express themselves through stone, which easily explains why in 2009 he decided to quit working day-to-day in Rhodes Architectural Stone and focus on sculpture.
“I had always done sculpture commissions, but on the side while I ran and built the company,” he says. “Now I’m working on sculpture and design much more full time. I remain deeply involved with RAS, but am trying to give my artistic and design abilities first priority.”
And, he’s become one of his own customers for works such as construction of a private residence in Palm Desert, Calif., that utilized more than 550 tons of granite RAS quarried specifically for the project.
“We fit them all together, with very tight joints,” Rhodes says. “The assembled volumes are huge. Some of them measure 60’ X 18’ and divide the interior spaces almost as walls. Other areas are just abstract.”
He was also honored for his creation of the “Stone Wave,” the 2,000 ft2 of stone at the center of the Antoine Predock-designed Tacoma Art Museum. Another series of pieces he calls “Sentinals” are abstract forms that explore simple gestures.
“The idea is that if a work is ‘suitably blank’ the viewer will read into it something much larger,” he explains. “I’m taking a hard material like granite and through abstract gesture imbuing it with meaning supplied by the audience.”
Whether his company is completing a complicated commercial project or he’s working the stone himself, Rhodes wants to continue to share the knowledge he picked up so unexpectedly years ago in Italy.
“Within the industry, I’m known as one of the last apprentices,” he explains. “The guild has collapsed in Italy with the deaths of the people I trained with, and there is no apprentice system in the United States.
“It’s one of those things I didn’t understand at the time, but I was given an incredible gift. I’m taking that sacred knowledge that has been passed down through the ages and I have a chance to share it in my lifetime.
As part of that, for several years now he’s been working on a book to share what’s he’s learned through his career. And, Rhodes believes sharing his knowledge is a very important thing – almost as important as getting the most from the stone itself.
His goal: “We’ll continue to do the work that I’m most-interested in, when people are trying to express something in stone, something fundamental.”
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