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Rhys Cook -
Sculptor
Rhys Cook is a local
sculptor who isn’t afraid to try everything at least once.
Cook doesn’t limit his media by much and creates his unique
pieces using wood, stone, metal, concrete and even
Styrofoam. Rhys Cook is originally from Washington, NC and
said he owes a great deal to his high school art teacher,
Don Miller. “He meant a whole lot to me and gave me a lot of
help,” said Cook. Miller and Cook worked on the Washington
High School productions together and Cook said that’s where
he learned to create something out of nothing. They built
sets together on a small budget, using what they had to
create dynamic scenes for less money.
Cook said he used this knowledge in his own sculpture work,
creating pieces out of natural resources, but without the
huge costs. Cook doesn’t focus on just one resource though
and he has had the opportunity to work with everything from
wood to concrete, and everything in between. Cook said, “I’m
interested in blending medias as well. In the future I’m
going to try steel and stone.”
Cook went to ECU after high school, but then transferred to
Tulane University in New Orleans and loved it so much he
considered the Gulf coast area “home”. He lived there for
nine years before he was forced to leave due to Hurricane
Katrina. Cook evacuated to Alabama and then Houston before
returning to Greenville in October 2005. ECU’s School of Art
and Design offered Cook a semester for free if he would come
back and join the master’s sculpture program. Cook said ECU
had one of the top three sculpture schools on the East Coast
and he was, “impressed by the faculty and flattered and
honored to come back.” He’s been in the department for one
year as a graduate student and he is teaching his first
class this semester.
Rhys draws inspiration from other artists, including Barbar
Hepworth, an English sculptor from the mid 1900’s. He had
the chance to visit her museum in England before the
hurricane and stayed for months and learned how to carve
marble. Cook also traveled to Italy in the fall of 2002 with
a Study Abroad program thorough the University of Georgia.
One of his pieces, “Cemetery Man”, was displayed at Cortona
during his stay in Italy and pictured in the local paper.
Cook said he likes to take from a lot of contemporary
artists as well and likes to see what people are successful
with and experiment with that.
Cook’s goal is to be a tenured art professor and share what
he’s learned with others. He wants to share with his
students as well as gain from them. Cook said he’s less
interested in making money, and more interested in trying
new things with his craft. “I like the idea of something so
manmade contrasted with something completely natural. It’s
untouched by the hand of man until I get it,” he said. He
doesn’t like working from a rigid plan though and he said
his methods are more automatic than planned. “I respond to
the material when it comes to me, which is usually 4 a.m.”
Since Cook works from home it makes it easy to sculpt when
he’s moved to, not when he’s scheduled to. “I don’t like
being crowded in a studio, so this works great,” he said.
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