Laura and Marianne Swift

1963

Artist Avon Neal and photographer Ann Parker were a husband-and-wife duo interested in vernacular or everyday art forms. For A Portfolio of Rubbings from Early American Stone Sculpture, Neal and Parker traveled across New England to examine and preserve the imagery and epitaphs inscribed on graveyard headstones, made by unknown Puritan sculptors. Through the inscriptions, we can follow the political climate, linguistic developments, and the advancement of the form itself. These tombstones were exposed to the elements and rapidly deteriorating; the rubbings preserve images and lives that otherwise would be lost to time.