The Craig artist has been collecting rocks from Prince of Wales and surrounding islands for the past decade, turning somewhat-pretty beach rocks into gleaming marble sculptures, many dotted with fossilized traces of creatures that lived millions of years ago.
McWilliams offers his work through Stone Arts of Alaska, with locations in Craig and Washington state. Although he started the business in just the last decade, he said always had an interest in rocks.
"I collected rocks as a little kid, 2 to 3 years old," McWilliams said.
His interest in rocks took an economic turn when, in his 20s, he worked at a Colorado gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper mine, he said. When he wasn't collecting ore, he gathered crystals, selling them to museums and private collectors.
McWilliams later migrated west to the coast and bought a charter boat, he said. His knowledge of geology eventually gave a focus to his expeditions, and for about 12 of 19 years on the boat, he ran a specialized operation, taking geologists out for survey jobs and exploration.
Some of those travels led him to Prince of Wales and surrounding islands, McWilliams said, and he found some beautiful marble in that area. He also had met some sculptors in the Seattle area, he said, and in the late 1990s, McWilliams decided to sell his boat and collect marble to sell to artists.
"Then I started thinking I'd like to (carve stone) myself," he said. Now he not only sells raw rock to other carvers, he makes his own sculptures.
The stone McWilliams collects all comes from Southeast, most from the Tongass National Forest. He said he has a special-use permit to harvest the stone, most of which he gets by boat with help from an employee.
Some of the rocks are "attached to the world, you might say," and have to be chiseled away. Others are loose on the ground. If he has driven to a site on Prince of Wales, he said, he can collect up to several tons with his truck. With his boat, though, there's a different limit.
"It has to be (small) enough for two not-very-smart guys to get it into a boat," he said, laughing. He added that he and his cohort sometimes even pack rocks down mountainsides.
Most people would walk right over these potential works of art, McWilliams said; he's got an eye for rocks, though.
"I know what I'm looking at because I've been doing it a long time," he said.
Back at his shop, McWilliams uses a water-jet cutting tool to shape the stones.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.