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UPDATED 3/1/2011
by Kirk Hathaway
New Bern transients, boaters and visitors, eventually find their way to Trent River Coffee Company and in the middle of owner Ed Ruiz’s energies as he quickly engages a morning audience. On one such morning, across the counter from Ruiz, a muscular, white-bearded man was so intensely animated that his heavy Polish accent made it nearly impossible for me to understand anything he was saying. That was my first reaction to Edward Rokosz, a man I have come to respect among all others.
With coffee service second to counter chatter, I received my coffee from Ed Ruiz along with an introduction to 
Edward Rokosz, a wood sculptor and plaster specialist who had worked on Tryon Palace preservation and was then restoring plaster and frescos in New Bern’s Scottish Rites Temple. Ruiz has a habit of bringing together talents (he was a founding member of the blue-rock band Jen and Tonic and frequently hosts music gatherings at the coffee shop). He quickly highlighted my photographic talents, and within minutes Rokosz had commissioned me to document his fresco restoration.
Shortly, we went from there to his restoration site, then to Chelsea’s for drinks and appetizers. Finally, I invited him to my sailboat at the docks only to discover that Rokosz was fine with a boat tied at a marina but wanted little to do with any craft that was about to throw off lines. He wasn’t winning my admiration at this point. My craft was new to the downtown marina, and I was anxious to cast off and do a little exploring up the Trent or Neuse. I asked him what he was doing in a waterfront town if he didn’t like the water.
“I like waterfront towns,” he admitted telling me of his own property near the Black Sea in his native Poland, “but I choose views from the land, not the sea.”
Rokosz, it turned out, not only likes waterfront towns but the Polish born artist has been responsible for preserving the historic and artistic integrity of some of North Carolina’s oldest waterfront structures. His work on historic sites includes Durham and Fayetteville, but at the water’s edge he has cared for some of the oldest structures in New Bern, Bath, and Edenton. Among these are New Bern’s Scottish Rite’s Temple and Tryon Palace, Bath’s Palmer House
, and Edenton’s James Ider House, a privately owned historic home. I had been to all of these towns, not all by boat, and some of the structures, but it had never dawned on my that such building designed and constructed with old world techniques truly required the consistency of those techniques to keep the structures sound and properly preserved.
Put simply, Rokosz explained the difference between original plaster techniques (those he grew up learning in his native Poland village) and more contemporary plater practices were merely the difference of dealing with objects as inanimate or living. “True plaster breathes,” he told me. “The wood, the plater, the wall. They are flexible in hot and cold.”
In the last few weeks, I have had the honor of selecting and editing around 40 of the thousands of photographs I have taken of his works. These were printed in our Minnesota labs and arrived last weekend in a portfolio that ranged with enlargements from 11x16 to 20x24. Shortly, this portfolio will be send to Poland where Rokosz will hold an exhibition of his photographed in his native land.
As we all know, quality in craftsmanship is a rare things in a world of mass production and digital creations. So finding a personable artist such as Rokosz, with intimate works that can speak to you and craftsmanship that can be dedicated to your restoration or quality construction project, is a rare things. As you might find, it’s not just a matter of connecting with an artisan but of making a friend.
Visit:
Rokosz Galleries at Cape Carolina
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