In the Pine Plains hamlet of Bethel, a cluster of old cemeteries predating Evergreen Cemetery sits behind stacked stone walls. Some of the gravestones, dating to the late 18th century, are steeped in ghost stories passed down through generations.
Earlier this spring, Pine Plains Highway Superintendent Carl Baden was clearing the entrance to one of these burial grounds so the town mower could pass through later in the season. That’s when Scott Chase, who lives across the road, pointed out a stone he had noticed just a few days prior.
Set near the entrance, the stone bears the image of a woman on one side and a line from the 1990 poem “Evening Walk” by Charles Simic on the other.
“It looked like someone had used new technology to print an old image on a stone,” Baden said. “It could have sat there for weeks, months, years.”
Chase mentioned the discovery to his wife, Jeanne Valentine-Chase, who shared it with neighbors in Bethel. “Wow. What the heck?” said Dyan Wapnick. “Very cool,” added Robert Lyons. Jeanne speculated: “Who placed this stone near the entrance? Probably it was someone honoring a relative buried there.”
When asked why he hadn’t alerted others sooner, Chase said, “I was surprised to discover it and thought it must be a memorial by someone to a cemetery resident. I decided it should just be respected and remain like any headstone, as it had meaning to someone.”
It turns out the stone had been placed there on Sept. 12, 2024, by Maureen Manning, an artist and the sister of Mike Manning, who lives adjacent to the cemetery (Mike Manning is a volunteer contributor to the Herald.)
Maureen, who lives in Massachusetts, was visiting her brother when she installed the work. “This is the first piece I’ve placed out of state,” she said.
“I created this piece, carried it around in my car for a bit,” she wrote in an email. “When I visited Michael in September I took a walk down Carpenter Hill Road. Then it came to me to place her by the entrance to the cemetery — a guardian, a keeper to welcome visitors. Visitors from the present, the future, and yes, the past.”
Originally trained in anthropology and geography, Manning later worked as a field archaeologist and illustrator, then moved into paleontology and fisheries biology. Today, she works in biology at Amherst College.
Manning describes her process as “locative collage,” a practice she learned during a 2023 workshop with a Norwegian environmental artist known as Miss.Printed. “She describes locative collage as filling the gap between collage and street art,” Manning said.
Since the workshop, Manning has created 10 works using found photographs, applied to stone, birch bark, or cardboard. Each is placed in a specific location that she feels suits the subject.
“Sometimes they tell me where they want to be in time and space,” she said of the people in the photographs.
For the Bethel piece, Manning said she made three versions using the same photograph — two on wood and one on stone. “I don’t know who she is, but her face immediately caught my eye,” she said.
Everything Manning makes in this series is biodegradable. She documents her work as it degrades in nature. Often people find and take the work. “Sometimes it’s gone in a week,” she said. “One piece has been out in the woods for two years come September.” She doesn’t mind that some pieces leave the setting she’s placed them in. “I hope to get people to interact with the work. When people take a piece, I hope they enjoy it.”
Mike Manning said he and his sister have been keeping an eye on the piece in Bethel. “We have been monitoring it,” he said. “I think it’s great that it took half a year to be discovered.”