Photography by R.J. Hartbeck
Bob and Tony Rocca
“Do you want a foot?” asks Bob Rocca. He means a laundry basket–sized human foot made of concrete. There’s one resting in the lot behind AKT Studio, the workshop in Near North Riverfront that Rocca runs with his son Tony. They’re both showing me around. I decline the swag but ask whence it came. The Roccas explain, with a hint of mischief, that they had the mold from a previous project, and frequently find themselves with leftover concrete. Might as well pour it into something.
The Roccas don’t advertise but say that over the last two years they’ve been busier than ever—and you may have looked at, stepped past, or lounged on the fruits of their labor. They specialize in public art, public works, and hybrids thereof. Some of their creations are understated, such as their wooden benches in Kiener Plaza, their stone quatrefoil-imprinted tree grates in Clayton, or their modular streetscaping structures at I-270 and Olive in Creve Coeur. Some are more visible, such as the fleur-de-lis planters they poured for Soulard Market and St. Louis Lambert International Airport, or the geodesic traffic bollards and 7-foot-high wooden ampersand in The Grove. And some of their work is preservative: They cleaned and resurfaced both the bronze Martin Luther King Jr. statue in Fountain Park and some bronze eagles for the flagpoles at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building downtown.
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Photography by R.J. Hartbeck
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“We can do anything, except for making money,” Tony jokes. Bob thinks about it and says: “I guess you could say we’re problem-solvers.”
To be clear, the Roccas do a lot more than these kinds of jobs. Bob says he’s worked on the sets of films such as Gone Girl, Up in the Air, and The Ghost Who Walks; Tony mentions his gigs in the production of the TV show Empire and as a member of the front-of-house team on Taylor Swift concert tours. The Roccas even allowed a television commercial for Pabst Blue Ribbon’s Stronger Seltzer to be shot by local director Jordan Phoenix right inside their studio. In addition to all this, the Roccas build furniture, using stone, reclaimed wood, and other discarded industrial materials to make coffee tables, conference tables, and reception desks.
But artful public works jobs have been plentiful lately. A good example is the thing that Bob’s tending to on the summer afternoon that I walk into their humid warehouse-like studio: one face of a large square column that will stand at the southeast corner of Lafayette Square Park. It weighs 9,000 pounds, he says, and will replace a column damaged in a traffic accident. “If you notice, the fleur-de-lis is upside down,” he says, grinning. “I don’t know why they did it that way!”
Photography by R.J. Hartbeck
Some of their jobs come from private entities that want to put an object on public display. Consider the Tetris block–shaped object on a nearby table. It’s a prototype for an interlocking set of concrete blocks that Gateway Greening, the urban gardening nonprofit, is considering using to make 10-inch-deep garden beds. Right next to that stands a tall wrought-iron archway unearthed on a property in Maplewood; John Parker, who runs O’Connell’s Pub, wants it as an accent piece for a beer garden. Perhaps the most prominent object in the studio is a firepit commissioned by canoe trip company Big Muddy Adventures for its new guide shop in the Central West End. (Tony moonlights as a guide there, and the Roccas repair their canoes.) The pit itself was an old tractor wheel. It hangs beneath a giant tripod fashioned from beams that used to be a part of a KSDK set. The Roccas gather such items from their many connections around town.
“There’s stuff I’ve been hauling around for 30 years,” Bob says with a smile, “because one day we’ll find a use for it. We always do.”
