Muddy Creek Headstones

Back in May of 2021, I participated in my first live-in-person-post-Covid art exhibition. It was the Oddities Bazaar in Denver, PA (near Adamstown which is near Reading). The show was great – at the famous Renninger’s Antiques Mall - but that’s not the point of this blog. The point is a graveyard. 

I’ve traveled quite a bit across the U.S. (and a bit in Italy) over the ten-plus years that I’ve been writing this blog, but COVID put a stop to travel for awhile, didn’t it? During that period I drove around the tri-state area near Philadelphia, where I live, but that was it. Adamstown was an unusual trip for me, only about an hour and a half due west, but still, farther than I’d gone in about 16 months. As I write this in November 2021, travel bans and lockdowns are pretty much a thing of the past. Its no longer unusual to see planes in the sky.

On that day back in May, I got to Renninger’s about 8 a.m., half an hour before setup. So of course, I grabbed my smart phone, hit the Google Maps app, and typed in “cemetery nearby.” Finding hidden gems was never this easy! (By the way, if you try this, you will get different results if you type in “graveyard nearby.” Go figure.)

So, up pops “Muddy Creek Church Cemetery,” no more than half a mile away. Great name! (If you go, the address is 11 S Muddy Creek Rd, Denver, PA 17517.) Shot over there to find the superb sign you see above. Also, the Muddy Creek Church is across the street. It’s a fairly large cemetery, with rolling hills and a central driveway – a few acres. To the right of the entrance are Victorian-era and newer grave stones, to the left are older ones, dating back to around 1730, when the cemetery was established. It was these older stones that caught my attention. 

                                         

From the road, just beyond the cemetery sign, were dozens of large brownstone gravemarkers, the kind I’ve seen carved with angel heads in North Jersey. This early in the morning, I could only see their plain backs. They were in shadow, but the other side of the stones – and whatever might be inscribed on them – were brightly lit by the morning sun.

Muddy Creek Lutheran Church in background

I drove into the cemetery from the newer entrance up the road, parked my vehicle as close to the old stones as possible, and got out to stretch my legs. Had about twenty minutes before I had to get over to Renninger’s to start setting up my photography, cards, books, and other items to exhibit and sell. As I walked up the hill, I noted a few really interesting marble-arched gravemarkers, the type of which I’ve only seen around the Pottstown, PA area. 

When I got to the brownstone markers, I was stunned! Looking at me from several stones were life-sized faces carved in bas-relief into the stone! I would guess these are likenesses of the deceased. I’ve never seen this anywhere else. I’ve seen some wonderful brownstone carvings of angels and winged death’s heads here and there, but I’ve never seen anything like this in brownstone! Was it a Pennsylvania Dutch or Amish thing to do? Some neighboring stones had floral design carvings, which reminded me of Amish quilts. 

But these plain folk are not into embellishment, right? Sort of like Quakers, with their simple flush-to-the-ground grass markers? Well, that may be the case with Amish gravemarkers, the Amish being a religious denomination (along with Mennonites, etc.) that falls under the “Pennsylvania Dutch” umbrella term. Some of these Pennsylvania Germans, however, who emigrated to Pennsylvania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed a highly artistic folk art called Fraktur, so named after the distinctive font style (see link http://frakturweb.org/). Most Fraktur art was created between 1740 and 1860.

The floral carvings on these stones at Muddy Creek seem to be examples of Fraktur folk art, though I am certainly no expert. All names and dates on these stones have been worn away, but the faces, the designs, the feelings remain. Certainly, the wilting flowers became a common, Victorian-era symbol of a life lost, a popular form of mourning art. Turns out I was wrong about these seemingly “simple people” – PA Dutch Fraktur folk art, popular in the early to late 1800s, was highly artistic, colorful, and used to adorn (and therefore closely associated with) rites of social life e.g. birth and marriage. Examples of the documents used to certify such events can be seen here http://frakturweb.org/what-is-fraktur/fraktur-gallery/. Death being a part of life, it makes sense that the Fraktur artistic style would be used to adorn their gravestones.

Mary Roach, in her book, SPOOK, says that readers assume that “authors are experts in the field about which they have chosen to write.” She offers that “Possibly I’m the only one who begins a project from a state of near absolute ignorance.” Well, no, she’s not the only one, LOL. Pretty much describes my approach as well, so I am asking for my readers to help me out! I’ve done a bit of research after the fact, but the faces still baffle me. I’m thinking they were prominent citizens of the area, since they would be the ones with the money to have such a memorial stone carved. It is fairly common to see faces, busts, and even entire bodies sculpted in granite in the Victorian era, but these brownstones seem to have been made prior to that time.

Offering a clue to the area’s history is this plaque on the cemetery fence, designating it as “Cocalico Area Historical Site.” According to the East Cocalico Township website, “The name Cocalico is believed to have originated from "koch hale kung", Delware Indian words meaning "den of serpents", apparently referring to the abundance of snakes near the creek at that time,” (the area being settled around 1723). Hmmmm….glad I didn’t wander off into the woods looking for the actual Muddy Creek. (https://www.eastcocalicotownship.com/about-your-township/pages/township-history)

New England boasts many fine examples of slate stones carved with a likeness of the deceased, and I’m wondering if any of my readers have seen the brownstone versions anywhere else, like these in Muddy Creek? I put their creation age around 1830, as that seems to be the death dates on the marble stones nearby, on which some inscription is still visible. The faces on these stones are not soul effigies, i.e., angel-winged head carvings, but, I believe, the likenesses of the actual deceased person. 

As I was wondering if anyone could shed light on this Muddy Creek Mystery, I happened on a couple recent Instagram posts by @deaths_heads_and_angels (the artist who also goes by the name of @phil_odendron and has become a personal friend over the past few months). He has published images of brownstone gravemarkers in this same geographic region of Pennsylvania, with folk art embellishments of the type I saw. His are mainly soul effigies, however – angelic death’s heads with wings, although he has found a few that do not appear to be skull-based, so they may be representations of the dearly departed (please visit his extraordinary collection of images at https://www.instagram.com/deaths_heads_and_angels/).

Author with Muddy Creek headstone

The progression of gravestone carvings went from the skull and crossbones era during the early 18th century to the softer, angelic representations as that century came to a close. Certainly, throughout this period, there were carvings that depicted the deceased, but now I’m wondering if there was a specific time, at least with those of German heritage in Pennsylvania, that this became a trend – somewhere between the death’s head and the soul effigy, or maybe during.

References and additional reading:

http://www.mclchurch.org/our-story.html

Fraktur Folk Art:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_(folk_art)

http://frakturweb.org/

If you would like to browse my ETSY shop to see the kind of work I had for sale at Renninger’s, please visit here:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/StoneAngels

Stuck in a Photographic Rut

I was in the supermarket a couple weeks ago with my wife and child when we bumped into a friend of ours. Maria is a photography professor at one of Philadelphia’s art colleges. We’ve been friends for several years and I greatly admire her work as well as the historical retrospective photography exhibits (link at end) she has produced and curated.

She told me how much she enjoys reading this blog. I was grateful, a bit embarrassed, and curiously, I began to feel guilty for not spending much time writing about photography. (I also feel guilty about not updating my PhotographerCoach.com website in forever!) 

"Rocky's" deceased wife, Adrian

I started thinking about the fact that in my blog, I’ve gravitated toward using photography as a means of documenting things, to prove I was there – the real world. Originally, I would write about a particular fine art photograph that I made, how I made it or perhaps the details related to my bringing it into existence. Now, the photographs at times do no more than punctuate my words. As a result, my photography recently has become more journalistic than fine art. The images are not exactly snap-shoddy, but they have veered off my intended path. While it’s true that I’ve continued to enter some juried art shows and attend events to sell my work, these mainly involve older images.

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I suppose I could just continue the documentary-style photography and hope someone will archive it all into a book like Michael Lesy did with Charles Van Schaick’s Wisconsin Death Trip. But I REALLY like making fine art photographs! It’s a way of creating fantasy out of reality for me. So how do I get back on track with what I truly like to do? Or better yet, achieve a better balance between the fine art images and the documentary photos?

I began thinking about a presentation that my friend Maria made a few years ago to the Photographic Society of Philadelphia. The presentation was a slide show and lecture about her recent trip to Italy. Maria creates wonderful fine art photography. Her images in the presentation, however, were travelogue photos of the Italian countryside and its people. Hers are the type of travel snapshots you would expect a seasoned professional photographer to take. Maybe I need to hone this skill.

"Death" in the English Cemetery

Travel, of course, is a great way to get your creative juices flowing. I was in Italy too, a few years ago, but only came back with tombstone photographs! While the English Cemetery in Florence was beautiful, perhaps I should have looked at the rest of the beauty around me. (If you’re a cemetery photographer, by the way, Italian sculpture has everything else beat!)

Get Out of Your Element

Making photographs outside your usual stomping grounds is certainly a good way to get your creative juices flowing. However, you don’t need to travel all the way to another country for a change of scenery – often such new experiences appear in your own back yard. For example, I attended the Kinetic Sculpture Race in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood recently to enjoy the festival and take photographs. Even if a certain kind of art is not your forte (e.g. building bicycle-powered vehicles), you can still get ideas from other people’s creativity. After seeing the Amish buggy, I realized that I should make a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to see what Amish graves look like. Hmmm. Never even thought about that! In addition to the wonderful vehicles, the woman standing next to me in the crowd was a member of the Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia, a group of artists who create art out of trash (I’d always wondered what those people looked like!). When you talk with artists who work in a different medium, your own creativity can be stimulated.

If you feel like you’re in a rut and want to get out, there are all sorts of catalysts standing by, waiting for your call. Travel is just one of them. A photographer can learn things by hanging out with other photographers, but why limit yourself? While I certainly expect to learn some new things when I attend the AGS (Association for Gravestone Studies) conference next month, I already live in this world. It’s useful to jump the rails and land in an entirely different sphere every so often. You can learn things from wildly disparate sources, like seeing how the arts and crafters display their wares at art shows and talking with painters and sculptors about how they create. Such experiences help you see things from a different perspective. Everyone has artistic skills to share – for instance, I’ve gotten useful get tips about marketing my work from a friend who is a competitive BBQ chef.

Amish zombies at Kinetic Sculpture Race

Not being an academically-trained artist, I need all the help I can get. In my quest to create more of a balance between my documentary photography and my fine art work, I like to refer to those who have gone before me, to learn from their experience as well as my own. A reference I recently stumbled upon is Deanna Wood’s “Emerging Artist” blog. She has an archive called “Helpful Posts” which covers many of the anxiety-producing details that artists find themselves dealing with. Topics include “Hanging Artwork,” “Writing an Artist’s Statement,” “How Galleries Choose Artists,” and my personal favorite, “Rejection.” Since you REALLY would like nothing more than to just create your art, it’s helpful to have these essential things laid bare in front of you. Eliminating the guess-work of the real world helps me to concentrate more on my make-believe world.

Related Readings:

Maria DiElsi's "Artway Project"
Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia
Deanna Wood’s “Emerging Artist” blog
Ed Snyder's Photographercoach.com 
Ed book, Digital Photography for the Impatient:

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