NEWBURY – When one thinks of a gravestone carver, the conjured image is probably that of a humorless, gnarled man hunched over a large stone slate, his chisel and hammer tapping away to memorialize the birth and death dates of the deceased.
That is not Michael Updike, a robust, caring man, whose wit rivals his talent as a master sculptor and carver.
Updike has carved headstones for Pinocchio and Jimmy Cricket, Gumby and a frog, “who gave his life for science,” read his epitah. Updike created a gravestone for a possum, to absolve his guilt of killing one as a child. He sold the possum memorial slate to a woman who also suffered guilt from a possum’s death.
On a long thin piece of slate, he carved a headstone for a grasshopper he once crushed with a rock. He placed a rock on top of the slate.
He is also the carver of the penguins that float near the shore of the Merrimack. He carved the penguins to humor his children, or more likely himself. But many a car driving on Water Street have pulled over to make sure they were not seeing an illusion.
Updike loves a variety of creatures for his gravestones: ravens and crows, all types of fish, Octopi and even mermaid skeletons floating on the sea bottom. He is particularly fond of goats, which often end up in his motifs, because to the sculptor, goats are a symbol of survival. They will eat really weird stuff to survive, he explained.
A visit to his studio at his home on the edge of the marsh is so enticing he should charge admission. His garage is filled with boxes of slates, some small and designed to hang on a wall, and others large enough to be outdoor art. His carvings, one-of-a-kind art works, which he sells on line and at artisan fairs, are of fish and squirrels, maybe a human skull or a skeleton.
Updike also carves the memorable and traditional.
The city of Newburyport commissioned him to produce a large, round stone to honor those who died and survived Covid. It stands today on the Merrimack River waterfront along the extension of the Clipper City Rail Trail.
Updike studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, majoring in sculpture. Later, he earned an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Beginning in 1992, he began designing tabletop giftware and decorative art for Livia Cowan’s Mariposa, a gift and tableware company in Manchester.
He may be best known for his String of Pearls Collection, where multitudes of pearls provide luxurious borders around polished, silver pieces that were handcrafted from 100 percent recycled aluminum.
The death of a good friend, Heidi, and that of his father, John Updike, probably the most famous American novelist, led him to learn the craft of gravestone carving. “Cemeteries were America’s first sculptor gardens,” he said.
He studied the ancient craft from carvers and took a course in lettering in Rhode Island. He began experimenting with materials that included slates, marble and granite, but his favorite materials are slates that have been on rooftops.
He orders new stones from a company in Vermont that are delivered in a truck to his house/studio. But he gets most excited when he finds slates of different sizes and styles at yard sales. He prefers slates that have been battered and pitted by weather and ones that have a bit of tar that must be scraped off. “They are the most interesting,” he said.
His first intricate gravestone was for his father, which he erected on a family plot in Plowville, PA, where the elder Updike lived as a teenager. The writer’s ashes are interred there and in a cremation garden behind a church in Manchester.
The design of his father’s gravestone is traditional and whimsical at the same time. He said his father feared death so much that the younger Updike carved his face smiling as a winged skull, happily ascending to heaven.
Below the date lines are various signatures of names the elder Updike used at different periods of his life. On the back, Updike carved an early poem written by his father. It’s positioned above a giant crow coughing up telephone poles.
To show potential customers, Updike began 10 years ago to carve a series of his own gravestones. He confessed that he has never been brave enough to put an actual date for his own death. In one of his first, he carved a crow dragging his name and partial date of his death off into the sky. Over the years he has made nine different gravestones for himself.
Commissions began to come in. He now carves six or seven a year. “It is a long process,” he said.
Some are commissioned by the decease’s heirs; others for themselves before their death. He meets with the clients to learn what they want on their gravestone. Those conversations run the gamut of emotions, he said. There can be jokes and laughter for some, tears for others.
He creates as many as six or seven different designs. By the fourth one, he said his imagination and humor kick in and the design gets a little strange and he knows the clients will reject it. But to his surprise, they often like those best.
The role of the gravestone carver is that of a psychoanalyst or pastor or a friend helping realize their vision, he said.
Updike has had some unusual requests. One was for a Beta fish. A woman had him carve a stone for her fish that was four inches long. In doing his research, he found that Beta fish are rarely longer than two inches, and they live about four years.
This fish died after only a year. “I think there was some guilt there,” Updike said.
Recently he was asked to carve a memorial for 40 horses, including a few ponies and a mule, named Smitty, which had died over the years on a West Newbury farm. He found a long, tannish-colored stone, on which he carved the names of the first grouping of horses and the mule. He added black paint to make the names pop.
The plan is to erect the three stones in the pastures where they once ran.
If you have an idea for your gravestone, Updike would love to hear it at mupdike222@comcast.net. For much more on the Michael Updike Carving Studio, visit www.michaelupdike.net. ♦
