- Jun 13, 2019
- 1 min read

“There is nothing more vital to me than stone.”

Updated: May 13, 2020

Richard Erdman stopped by this week to bring several incredible new works and catch up with us. We were thrilled to see Richard in the gallery!

Richard has been staying busy and is currently working on a number of commissions that will be placed as close as the U.S. and as far as Taiwan! This adds to his extensive placements which already include the Norton Museum of Art, FL, the Minneapolis Museum of Art, MN, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the United Nations.

Richard discussing Arete WM with Co-Director Martha Folsom

Richard with Fine Art Consultant Ben Flythe

Marble is comprised of former oceanic life—plankton, coral, fish—that is compressed and calcified over millions of years. It forms in shallow oceans and over time, as the tectonic plates shift and move, the stone is pushed up into mountains.

The beautiful and sinuous veins you see in marble? This is also compressed and crystallized calcium! One day a typhoon blows down trees, mud, and debris which settles into a bay, 100 million years later, that dusky vein you see in your graceful marble sculpture is the evidence of that single typhoon—it has become a slice of history!

When Erdman creates his strong and noble marble sculptures using the organic life of a distant earth, he is endowing it with new life. “It’s dormant and merely waiting to be awakened—I’m just waking it up!”