After receiving her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University and completing a research fellowship at Yale, Renee Rhodes focused her clinical work on helping people integrate their personality with their true spirit. She has continued her medical practice to this day. However, In the 1990s Rhodes began sculpting, and after training at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Lyme, Connecticut, combined her clinical work with her sculpting to expand the reach of her deepest commitment to inspire, support, and encourage others to achieve their highest potential.

 Sculpture is the voice Rhodes has evolved to communicate to a broader audience: it allows her to speak in depth about the human struggle from the mundane to the sacred and the ultimate transcendence of the human spirit. Public Art installations are Rhodes’ particular passion because such works give her a voice to the community-at-large regardless of age, race, gender, economic status or nationality.

 Although Rhodes’ style is classical realism, the emotions and ideas that her work embody are mythical and mystical. This occurs because sculpture is four dimensional, it communicates on multiple levels, and through the process of its making (materiality, artistry, forging, polishing, placement, etc.) and the natural effects of weather and time, a work comes to embody the three transcendent truths of the good, the true and the beautiful.

Rhodes has completed over 75 full-cast bronze sculptures and her work is in private and public collections across the United States. She produces work in response to both public and private commissions.

 Rhodes completed her first monument-sized commission in 2005 with the installation of Gaia in an outdoor performance space for The Hygienic Arts in New London, CT. In 2018 she was the unanimous choice of the New London City Council to design a public art installation for downtown on Eugene O’Neill Drive: Athena Stands Watch is a life-size bronze figure on the symbolic prow of a ship.