Columbarium Wall: Half-Topped

Stones are clicking and clunking into place on the Center Cemetery columbarium wall. The past two weeks have seen steady progress in bringing a twenty-five yard length to completion. Sill stones for fourteen of the eighteen niches have been laid.

While my work days have been spent in solitary seclusion, my evenings have been quite sociable. The town of Norfolk hosts Yale University’s special summer art program, located on the Stoeckel estate. Selected colleges from across the country and the world are invited to nominate candidates, enrolled as juniors, for fellowships in the six-week program. Sam Messer, the program director, visited the worksite and invited me to join the group for meals, lectures and figure drawing. It’s been over forty years since I held a charcoal stick in Audrey Flack’s drawing class at Pratt Institute. It was great fun to try my hand at it, again.