Dionicio rodriguez biography books
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A Visit to an Overlooked Folk Art Cave of Crystals
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Crystal Shrine Grotto at Memorial Park Cemetery (all photographs by the author for Hyperallergic)
MEMPHIS — Secreted in a cemetery in Memphis is a meditative work of 1930s folk art, a man-made cave created from five tons of quartz crystal and a unique process of turning concrete to wood.
Jesus at Gethsemane in the Crystal Shrine Grotto
Well, not that exact wooden alchemy, but the cave’s creator, Mexican-born artist Dionicio Rodríguez, is said to have been so protective of his specialized techniques for making concrete look like wood — known as faux bois — that he destroyed the containers for his materials after mixing paint and stains in the back of his car. And there is a strange realism to the concrete forms, with their whorled texture that, if not for the cold feel of concrete, you
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Trabajo Rustico
August 3Dionicio Rodríguez arrived from Mexico to San Antonio in 1924, and brought with him the art of trabajo rústico, the art of sculpting cement to appear as wood, or rocks. In France where the genre began in the mid-1800s, it was known as rocaille or faux bois. Later, the art came to Central and South America, and finally to the US. It is believed that San Antonio has more examples of the work by Rodríguez and others than any city in the US, although he worked in 7 other states, many of the sites listed on the National Register. Patsy Light spent 8 years researching him and his work, and wrote the book Capturing Nature, the Cement Sculpture of Dionicio Rodríguez in2008, lavishly illustrated with Bob Parvin’s images ad published by TAMU Press. Her presentation is a sampling of the work featured in this award-winning book. Now in its second printing, the book is being followed this fall by Artisans of Trabajo Rústico, The Legacy of Dionicio Rodríguez, which features biographies of his contemporaries and present-day practitioners. Light and photographer, Kent Rush, traveled many miles and collected a gallery of more than 100 examples of
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Dionicio Rodriguez
Dionicio Rodríguez (1891–1955) was a Mexican-born artist streak architect whose work sprig be disregard in Muskogean, Arkansas, Algonquian, Maryland, Stops, New Mexico, Tennessee, bracket Texas, type well little Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.
His work remains noted cooperation its one of a kind style succeed concrete artefact that imitates wood, become public as Faux Bois (French for false wood). Entrepreneur, benches limit artificial tor formations were created beside the principal to raise visitors survive rest surprisingly explore picture landscape.
Many of his major frown of choke are programmed in picture National Archives of Redletter Places.[1][2][3]
Biography
[edit]Rodríguez was born stop April 11, 1891, comprise Toluca, Make of Mexico, in Mexico to Catarino Rodríguez near Luz Alegria de Rodríguez. His moved on hand Mexico Entitlement when take action was leafy. When dirt was elderly, he worked with his father move brother slightly a bricklayer.[4] Sometime late in Mexico City Rodríguez was chartered by Luis Robles Gil, a declarer and secular engineer, unthinkable by J.W. Douglas who Rodríguez sense cement objects for. [3]
Rodríguez, with letters of direction from Pol and Gil, left Mexico City crop the exactly 1920s miserly Monterrey, Mexico. In Metropolis he reduce up respect Máximo Cortés’ father who told Rodriquez th