Cemetery monument artwork - ongoing
These are drawings and paintings of images of cemetery monuments - weathered with time, as they are all from the late 1800s - from Chicago area cemeteries, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan cemeteries.
I have always found cemeteries to be peaceful places of refuge, even beautiful in many ways. While cruising through some of the Chicagoland cemeteries, I began to take notice of the monuments that were actually intended to immortalize, in a way, the departed. Some of these monuments were sculptures of men and women who were extremely important and prominent in their day. These were people, I thought, who actually built the big cities of our Country, who made America the industrial capital of the world, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was a lot of great wealth created in those days; thus, the era was known as the “Gilded Age.” It was the families of these great industrialists who had sculptures and monuments built in remembrance of the greatness of their dearly departed; sometimes sculptures and monuments were built of the wives and children, and even pets of the industrialists who met their demise prematurely. These monuments were made of stone, marble, and bronze; some materials, of course, held up better than others. I suppose the families who commissioned the likenesses of their loved ones were sure the materials would stand the test of time and immortalize the deceased. The ones that did not stand the test of time are the ones that most interested me – and I decided to create artworks of. Mostly these paintings and drawings are about what happens from the effects of weather on these beautifully sculpted monuments of probably wonderful, industrious individuals and their families after a century or more of time. No longer are these sculptures seen as likenesses of important individuals, they become more about pathos, compassion, and even grotesqueness; thus, even stone and marble cannot create immortality.
But, again, even the concept of the deterioration of these cemetery monuments is in keeping with my fascination with life and death – in all forms.