Jan
19
Hope Cemetery is the main graveyard for Barre, Vermont, home of (ahem) the best sculptural granite on earth, and consequently home to many of the most technically expert stonecarvers. Working granite in poorly ventilated sheds is lethal, and the master carvers developed a poignantly bizarre competition of carving their own gravestones out of the material that was killing them as they worked. Hope is the result of that, and their other work. It is a graveyard, but it is also a sculpture garden on a par with any museum collection in North America.
