I had heard about the Artists’ Cemetery in Woodstock last July while I was up as an artist-in-residence at “Byrdcliffe,” a turn-of-the-century artist community that offers studio and living space to artists (and writers) on a monthly basis. Many of the legendary artists who had worked and lived up in Woodstock were buried there at the Cemetery, including Philip Guston, Milton Avery, the founders of the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony: Ralph and Jane Byrd Whitehead, and many other poets, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, and dancers.
Finding myself back in Woodstock last week on a sunny brisk day, I ventured down Rock City Road and walked left, across the street from the town cemetery, down a dirt path and along a small grassy hill. I saw a girl, maybe 25, wearing long black braids and hippy dress sitting next to her parked car making a painted sign on poster board. She asked me for the time, I asked her the way to the Artists’ Cemetery. We both grinned and she directed me through the tree line behind her.
Coming through the trees I came upon a long sloping grass-covered hill peppered with flat-lying stone rectangles: the Artists’ Cemetery. Artist names were carved into the faces of the slabs, some crudely scratched, some decorated in Art Nouveau period type with organic designs, and some had reproduced the artists’ signatures like an autograph. Some stones were placed and clustered among the roots and low sweeping branches of a bordering tree, while some were in the bright sun, marching up the hill like an angled chess board. A tall stone monument, backed with dark bushes, crowned the top of the hill.
At the very bottom of the slope I saw something glittering gold, and discovered the autograph of “Philip Guston” on a rectangular slab placed next to the identically sized stone for his wife Musa. Up the hill and slightly to the right I found plainer, squarer stones for Milton and Sally Avery…”signed” as well but forgoing the gold for a plain engraving.
Soon it began to feel like a type of Easter egg hunt, trying to find names I recognized, wondering about those I didn’t, admiring the more decorative designs. Not a human sound intruded; I heard a bird song, a soft rush of wind through a branch, otherwise silence.
The history of Woodstock’s rival artist communities was reflected in the somewhat cliquey placement of artists’ stones with like-groups, notably recalling the feud between the Whiteheads and Hervey White, who broke from Byrdcliffe to begin “The Maverick” arts colony in 1905, and later The Maverick Festival in 1915. The festival raised money yearly to fund the colony and invited costumed revelers to come and cook over fire pits, play music and revel in bohemian extravagances…often times clothing optional…foreshadowing a better known festival to come in 1969.
A man with white hair sat reading on a stone bench at the far side of the hill. He commented on the special silence of the place and mentioned that in his travels elsewhere nothing could match it. An artist and teacher, he told me that sometimes stones were found missing and would turn up in so-and-so’s local back garden. A shame, because I feared old Hervey’s had met the same fate, as he was nowhere to be found.
Call me a romantic, but I couldn’t help but feel that the peace perhaps came from the resting souls beneath, satisfied they had given their lives to their heart’s work, and left behind an immortal gift to the world.
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