RAC's Geodes Show Nature is Art

Mamaroneck resident and Rye Arts Center board member Robert Weiner has a penchant for shiny things, but not just anything that sparkles. Weiner likes his shiny things to be tens of hundreds of millions years old.

He is a collector of geodes, or “nature’s art,” as the Rye Arts Center is calling it for their exhibit that opens today to coincide with Rye Rocks Earth Day. Geodes are eons-old rocks with cavities that are filled with crystals. The rocks look normal from the outside but the center is a unique, glistening array of crystals and minerals that take a variety of shapes and sizes and spark the imagination.

Some look like cubes of gold, others look like fluffy white bunnies and others look like kale. Right now, 130 geodes from 25 different countries line the walls of the RAC’s gallery, as part of the Rye Rocks Earth Day event and as part of the “Nature’s Art” exhibit that will run through May 24.

“I regard them as God’s creation of tremendous power and sensual beauty,” said Weiner, who is a Mamaroneck resident and who has been involved with RAC for years He even helped to save it decades ago when the city had plans to destroy the old farmhouse, according to the show’s curator.

“The geodes are buried in veins of rock hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface, solidly entrenched in less beautiful rock. They have to be extracted by cutting, hammering, and even blasting. Though solid, the geodes can be compromised or destroyed by the shock of the excavation process, which often shatters the geodes or leaves them surrounded by jagged pieces of rock.”

This fact was the one that most surprised the show’s curator, Gail Harrison Roman, PhD, who added that most geodes are destroyed in the process, only about 10 percent  survive.

Dressed in a color blocked jacket and with eyes that glistened as she talked about the beautiful rocks, Roman matched the room of geodes she spent many hours with as she presented it to Patch on a recent afternoon.

Although she has 30 years of experience working as a curator, Roman had never worked with geodes before and knew little about them when she started.

“It was challenging because I don’t come from a science background,” she said of arranging the show. “It was fun to watch and visually lay out to get all the different effects,” she said.

“The goal was to have a wide variety of geodes to show their splendor and the different ways they form in nature,” she said.

All but a few geodes appear in the show exactly as they did in nature, a few have been polished. Some paintings are hung in the gallery above the display cases of rocks to demonstrate the idea that “art really is inspired by nature,” Roman said.

RAC Director Helen Gates is thrilled about the show. Weiner had mentioned his collection to her during a visit last fall and invited her to visit it in his home.
“It was just so vast and so beautiful and I said ‘this has to be an exhibit,’ it is just so stunning,” Gates said. “It is a form of art in its purest form.”

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The free exhibit is open from April 20 through May 24 at the Rye Arts Center. The opening reception “Sparkle at a Jewel of an Evening,” will be a cocktail party with hors d’oeures on April 20 from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $100. Read more here. 

Read more about Rye Rocks Earth Day here. 

Another event, "Bubbles, Baubles and Bonbons," a women's night out, will be held on Thursday May 2 from 7 to 9 p.m. The event will feature wine at five, blue tulip chocolates, and a Prima Dolce Company Jewelry demonstration by Elise and Meg.