Cemetery Walks Collection: 2023
Collection Displayed at Ravensgate Gallery in Phoenixville, PA in September 2023
I’m starting to become known in Phoenixville as “the artist who takes cemetery walks”, and I am thrilled to embrace that label.
I have been walking through cemeteries the way most people walk through parks for many years now. I was raised by parents who taught me that death is just another phase of life, and so I grew up seeing the beauty in it without the fear of it.
Last Summer, I started to collect flowers, weeds, and any natural element I could find during my walks and bringing them back to my studio to make encaustic artworks with them.
I had started using encaustic in a completely new way during Quarantine of 2020, pouring it in frames instead of just painting over my photographs with it. And so, I inadvertantely started creating a collection that summer, which I simply titled “Cemetery Walks”.
I decided to revive the summer ritual of walking in cemeteries weekly, and the building this collection brought me great joy once again. Last year, I brought my oldest son (he was 4 years old at the time) along and we made a piece that I ended up hanging with the collection again this year.
“Reformed Church at Providence”: Trappe, PA
Tuesday, August 5 2022 / 10:30am
It is hot and windy, an unusual combination. My oldest son, Johnny, insists that we use his Paw Patrol backpack for our adventure together today.
I can’t stop smiling. No one is around, and while adults see this as a cemetery, my kid sees it as a park. He’s running everywhere, and I can barely keep up as his eyes light up at every tombstone, each one different than the last. Some are all connected, one lengthwise piece of concrete with 5 heads jutting out, some taller than the both of us combined, while others are merely the size of my shoe.
“Mommy! Look at this one! It’s so cute and little. It’s Charlie’s size.”
Johnny is learning his letters at school.
“N-A-O-M-I. Mommy, what does that spell?” He will learn the words “mother” and “father” quickly if he spends a day reading here.
We begin our foraging adventure. I let him use the scissors. He is closer to the ground than I am, so he notices the buttercups before I do.
I am recording this whole thing on my phone. I really can’t help myself. I can feel how important this day is for me, and how much I will want to remember every little thing he says.
After dropping Johnny off at school, I proudly hike the four flights of stairs to my studio with his Paw Patrol backpack on my back. I love how I feel like he’s with me in that simple object.
I pick one of the biggest frames I have for the piece, a beautifully carved wood oval that calls to me. My brain turns off when the wax melts, and somehow the composition just comes without me trying.
The cemetery we went to is surrounded by an old stone wall covered in ivy, and from the road that was the part that drew me in. I wanted to pay homage to that experience here. I took a long S curved vine I’d cut and placed it directly in the center, allowing it to seemingly split the frame in two, jutting out with no intention of pushing it back inside. I want the ivy to draw you in. I let the massive frame and layers of wax allow me to add elements like walnuts and moss-covered bark, which I had never done before this piece, and helped inform later work in the series.
But the best part was this: By the end of the day, my hands were covered in dirt.
Since my three kids are all one year apart, my middle son turned 4 this summer, and so I decided to take him along with me to create a piece for this year’s collection.
“Morris Cemetery” : Phoenixville, PA
Monday June 5 \ 8:30am
“I don't want to go to school!!!!!!! I want to stay with you!!!"
My middle son, Benny, is really losing it at the school drop-off this morning.
“Please mommy! Can I stay with you today?”
“Ok, buddy. I understand. But mommy still needs to get some work done today. Can you come to mommy's studio to work?"
He lights up. He's heard of “mommy's studio” before, but he's never gone to mommy's work, just the two of us.
I still drive to Phoenixville, where my studio is located, but instead of turning onto Bridge Street I keep going straight.
We end up at Morris Cemetery.
I have a habit of taking my children to cemeteries the same way other mothers take their children to parks.
But, really, what is a cemetery but a park to a child?
There's open space to run, flowers to cut, and rocks to climb. This space- like all spaces- has no inherent meaning to a child. It is in how I view the space that matters.
Because how I view this space will be how my children view it one day, too. The language that I use in this place, in this opportunity, will shape the way my children think of it for the simple fact that I'll be the first to tell them so. That is how children become like their parents. They copy. And paste.
So- why am I taking my child to a cemetery on this beautiful late Spring morning?
Because I practice stoicism and because I am an artist.
And because I make the two become one.
As a mother of small children, I do not want them to be surprised when someone dies. Because death is a part of life, there is absolutely no way I can prevent them from experiencing the death of a loved one (and of themselves, one day) and so I want that conversation to start as early as possible.
I want my children to understand death because I do not want them to fear it, as most of the world does. Humans have made horrible and rash decisions in their constant desire to escape the inevitable.
I want my children to learn this simple lesson, as soon as possible:
Keeping death close keeps gratitude close.
Last year, I did a piece at Zion Lutheran Church, which I pass every day on my commute between my home and studio here in Phoenixville. That piece sold, so I decided to make another there, and it was one of my largest pieces of the collection.
“Zion Lutheran Cemetery” : Spring City, PA
The concept for “Cemetery Walks” began here.
I have been passing this exact cemetery on my way to my studio- my own personal haven- for 4 years now.
In the winter of 2020, I experienced my very first depression. It was here, walking, crying, marveling, that I felt Gratitude transform me.
I have been walking cemeteries for a long time. I was raised by parents who taught me that death is natural, beautiful, and inevitable. I witnessed open casket viewings, understood that tears come from joy as much as from sadness, and I have been making art about death since I was a teenager.
It wasn’t until I had my own children, three boys three years in a row, that I woke up to the power of it all.
It wasn’t until I welcomed Death that I truly started to live.
Each piece you see here is a memory of who I was on that day.
Each piece holds the story of a walk, just as each tombstone holds the story of a life.
The natural world holds all the lessons we need.
Just look.
For this next cemetery, I ended up making two pieces, which hung together like this.
“Bethel Church Cemetery” : Spring City, PA
July 7 2023 \ 10:40am
I live one mile from Bethel United Church Cemetery, with its looming hill and massive cross along the road. I have been living here for a year and a half, and occasionally I think, “I should walk there,” but I never do.
I’ve decided to revive my summer cemetery walks and create an encaustic collection around them, as I did last summer, and I am once again reminded of the lessons that await me when I schedule the time for it.
As I notice a tombstone of a young teenager I think of that boy's mother. I think about what it would be like to be that mother. I feel grief for her. I feel grief for all the mothers who have buried their children.
I realize at this moment that this is exposure therapy.
The idea of exposure therapy is that what you fear is what you need to expose yourself to.
Every parent fears the loss of their child. It’s why so many hold on so tight. It’s understandable. I have three, I know how it feels to (as my mother always said to me) “have your heart walking around the world”.
I feel other people's grief when I’m in a cemetery- people I don’t know, people I will never meet, people who might be dead and buried too and their grief is over. I feel it all anyway.
I keep coming here, though.
It’s as though I’m reaching through time and space to touch the ghost of something.
To understand that loss is everywhere. That nothing is guaranteed. And truly, in coming here, I am learning how to hold space for it all.
This piece was also a part of the 2022 collection, but seeing as it was still unsold, I decided to hang it and include the story along with the rest.
“Green Tree Cemetery” : Collegeville, PA
July 20 2022 / 9:50am
I’ve committed to a walk a week now, but with no idea where to go next. I’m lost in thought and halfway to the studio before I remember that I need to stop, so I quickly look up cemeteries in the area. I head to Green Tree Cemetery and when I arrive just before 10am it is hot and bright, not a cloud in the sky. The grass looks like it needs a good watering, and I realize there’s a fresh grave to my right. The funeral must have been a week ago or so, the flower arrangements are still on top, withering to a crisp under this hot summer sun.
I think these are the images that give people chills when they see it- the mound of a fresh grave giving them visions a ghost lurking nearby, a soul not ready to let go just yet. When I look up and see the blue sky I think of how I may not feel so comfortable being here at night, under the blanket of darkness. I don’t plan to do these walks then, but I end up making a piece that is unlike any of the others. It is messy and jumbled, like the gravesite, and I pour blue wax for day and black wax for night- a mish-mash of skies under which this fresh soul now sleeps.
“Washington Memorial Chapel Churchyard” : Valley Forge, PA
Monday August 28 \ 9:30am
Today is our oldest son’s first day of Kindergarten.
My husband requested off work today so that we could experience this milestone together, but after school drop-off we don’t really know what to do with ourselves.
We secure a last minute ticket to a movie we’ve been wanting to see in King of Prussia, but we get there too early, with a solid hour to kill, no books to read, and no pressing matters to discuss.
You can see where this one is going…
I suggest that we visit his grandmother’s grave located in Valley Forge Park, just 3 minutes from the theater, and my husband goes along with it despite my obvious ulterior motive to sneak in just one more piece before my show opening at the end of the week.
It’s the last week of August, which means the first leaves are falling already and I can feel myself entering the usual state of disbelief at the turn of every single season without fail.
I am self-conscious of myself during this walk, noticing that I pick flowers more freely with either my children or no one beside me. He’s not in the habit of collecting, as I am, but it’s nice to have him beside me anyway.
We marvel at the tombstones both separately and alone, zig-zagging as married people do between their own inner monologue and fragmented commentary.
“Look at these flags,” he says.
“Look at this mushroom,” I say.
“I have to go to the bathroom now,” he says.
“Me too, let’s go.”
I scrounge around for a plastic bag in the trunk to shove my goodies. He drives slowly so I can press the flowers in a notebook under the seat. I stack it all beneath an etch a sketch and dig it out of the car two days later.
This is my final piece.
When I had completed my walks, I realized that the collection was feeling somewhat flat. Because I had been accepted by a gallery, I knew I had the wall space and the opportunity to include more work.
I am also an avid writer and poet, so Including some framed poetry pieces felt like the perfect puzzle piece. In fact, we placed my largest poem in the center of the layout, which perfectly balanced the viewing experience between the written word and the three dimensional art.
“A Spider led me to a cemetery”
There is a spider in my car
Wholly uninvited in this space
Distracting me from an otherwise leisurely ride
Its spindly legs causing me to swerve sharply
An unfounded panic taking hold of the wheel
I cut the wheel and find myself at “Zion,”
It says
“Lutheran Church & Cemetery”
Door flung open, no longer able to find my new companion
I decide to walk
A blanket to cut the December wind
Boots to survey the frozen ground
Reading their faded markers
Gloves to forage through withered flowers
Once bright and inviting
Now decayed and deformed
I walk among them, the Margarets and Marys and Georges
Touching the ones that had fallen apart decades ago
“At Rest” they read
At rest indeed.
Surrounded by a world ever changing, ever moving, ever evolving
These corpses beneath the ground
They were somebody’s somebody
Once
Their memory lay on the tongue of the living
Once
Their unwashed clothes held a lingering scent
Once
Once
Was a hundred years ago now
Those tongues have stopped speaking
Those hearts have stopped beating
New markers are born
The ground overflowing with bodies
Holes are dug to put skeletons in metal boxes
The madness continues
The world keeps turning
The clock keeps ticking
The children keep screaming and growing and reaching for the hand of any living thing that will love them enough for the moment
So they can run past the tombstones that litter the ground and ignore the Johns and Davids and Helenas they never knew
Never will know
It’s cold
My fingers are freezing
But they are plucking plucking plucking away
Pulling the berries at the root
Grasping to save something from this place
Feebly trying to immortalize any creature still clinging to life in this ocean full of death
Where is this going?
Where am I going?
To the ground, soon enough.
To oblivion, one day.
To my own grave dug by a strangers hand so in a hundred years a child can run past the place where my bones have turned to dust and my memory is scattered among the trees and turn to read my name and perhaps for a moment wonder who I was and make up some story about my life and perhaps pick a berry from the eye of this soil and take a moment to stop the madness of living to ponder the madness of dying.
“A Certain Type of Land”
I am drawn
-to a certain type of land-
The way others are drawn
-to the sea, the mountains, the caves-
To Earth
-overgrown and alive-
Where decaying bones can be found
-six feet under, approximately-
And headstones litter the ground
The way my husband feels at home in a land of seaweed and rocky shores
I feel at home surrounded by lives I did not know
Will not know
But visit all the same
The graveyard is My Place
The Home of the dead
The Home of my past
The Home of my future
Lastly, I returned to my original way of working with encaustic. I was taught how to paint encaustic wax over Photographs back in college (my BFA was in Photography) by Leah Macdonald, and so returning to this original way of working, combining my first love of photography with my new passion for encaustic, brought my summer project to a close just before opening night on September 1, 2023.
Opening Reception
Friday September 1, 2023
Ravensgate Gallery
Phoenixville, PA
Huge thanks to matt Deblass for the gorgeous musical accompaniment for opening night.
Thanks to Sarah Graham of Natural florals for the custom headpiece that I wore that night.
