an Ancient Walk....

As a child growing up in New England,
our schoolyards, churchyards,
and sometimes playgrounds
....were usually located near the vicinity of an olde graveyard...

it is from these places that I have, and continue to,
reap inspiration for my Folk Art...

my circle of friends & I would spend hours in the quiet, grassy knolls...
between new & decrepit headstones.

we would bring chalk and brown paper-bags
and create rubbings from them,...
proudly hanging them in our bedrooms as 'pop-art'.

...always fascinated by the skill of the stone-carvers' hands
and use of crude tools,

that would create such works of Mourning Art...

...we would read their epitaphs...
the dates, some as early as the late 1600's,
were beyond comprehention
to our still-young minds.

the ages of the Dearly Departed usually were very young,
but occasionally we would stumble
(literally)
upon a stone that told the age
of one-who-had-passed to be in their 60's...

a person who was considered to be a wise-sage in those times,
...and very well-respected.

As I travel back to Connecticut every year,
I now see that some of these tablets have been vandalized
by unscrupulous and uncaring persons,
and have since been moved to a permanent place
near the old graveyards' protective stone walls...

....faces in stone peering out to us,

forever keeping a watchful eye over our youth....

Blessings from the Farm,

Lori