There are as many reasons for carving stone as there are for any work that offers the opportunity for artistic expression, generating an income, fulfilling a mission, satisfying an inclination, or challenging oneself in a creative outlet. As stone masonry work is the oldest skilled trade, stone carving is most likely the oldest 3-dimensional art form. It takes a skilled stone carver to replicate faces, human heads and bodies and even mushrooms, animals, flowers, letters, clothing or anything tangible in a piece of rock. The artistic bent in the mind of an excellent stone carver can see an image inside a rock, as in the famous statement attributed to Michelangelo: I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Adam Paul Heller specializes in hand-carving letters and relief sculpture in stone. He runs a successful business from his studio in Norfolk, Connecticut. I caught up with Adam as he was working on several projects in the monastery cemetery and learned a little more about his craft and his business. His artistic path has intersected with Portsmouth Abbey repeatedly over the years.

After graduating from the University of Vermont with a degree in Studio Arts in 1996, he had tried numerous forms of creative and artistic pursuits but none in particular stood out. His initial contact with stone carving came at Regina Laudis Abbey, where he was an Artist in Residence from 1996–1998. It was Mother Praxedes Baxter who, intuiting that he needed to work with stone carving after a visit to an exhibition on Ancient Greece at the Yale Art Museum, began to instruct him.

Adam first visited Portsmouth Abbey around 1998 when he moved to Newport to work at the John Stevens Shop. He had met both Abbot Matthew and Brother Joseph while completing an Arts Residency program at Regina Laudis Abbey, a Benedictine women’s monastery in Bethlehem CT.

During his time in Newport, he started spending time with Ade Bethune, who lived down the street from the Stevens Shop. She had made a career as an artist and had been deeply involved in liturgical artwork for decades. Ade had a long and deep relationship with the Abbey, becoming an oblate and now buried in our cemetery. Adam spoke of his contact with her:

“I helped her out with some basic chores and she taught me some basic calligraphy. We made pens from reeds and I made her lunch on occasion. Ade had worked with Nick's Grandfather in the early years (late 1930's), after he had bought the Johns Stevens Shop. I was curious about the history of the Shop and curious to see how other artists meshed faith and art. I also wanted to understand how John Howard Benson had created such an interesting legacy. At the time I was also very attracted to the Benedictine life, the chant, the sense of daily rhythm, honoring God through relationships with the earth, with humanity and through beauty and art. Ade had related to Portsmouth Abbey when Aquidneck Island was a very different and rural place, accessible only by ferry.”

Adam mostly works in creating custom, hand carved memorials and tombstones for families. This work has a lot of meaning for him. Adam notes that our culture does not have a deep appreciation for death: we mostly have an aversion to it. Emphasis is placed on getting a body into the ground and covering it up, believing that this act in itself will heal, give closure, or change something for us quickly. People need time. Adam often works with families who have been looking for a stone for years. While the stones offer beauty, they also provide people a fresh context for death and a way to grieve, a place to put that lingering grief. Ideally, this is what a memorial stone is meant to be. It is a totem, where one can place one’s grief, or at least some of it. Sometimes just talking and carefully, thoughtfully, designing a stone for a loved one with a professional artist, can be transformative.

Ideally, Adam tries to have clients come to his studio to meet him, see the space, and look at some examples of his work in process. This benefits the project, allowing him and his prospective client to have an experience of each other and to build trust. He serves some coffee or tea, as preferred, and some other bites: “It can be an intense experience to commission a tombstone or artwork, and I try to make it as comfortable as possible.” Basically, Adam makes sure that his initial encounter is in the context of hospitality. As he puts it: “Whether it is a memorial for a loved one, a private commission or an artwork, I do my best to integrate my clients’ ideas and help create a vision for something they will love.”

Adam finds inspiration for his carvings from the world around him, however: “…on a deeper level, I suppose I am a feeler. Beyond a visual ‘Aha!’, sometimes things strike me with a feeling, and that I also find very inspiring. Perhaps it's a person, music, a text, something visual, I'd say this deeper cut is more relational, a heart response, one that's hard to articulate, but perhaps common to the human experience?”

Adam’s full response to the question, “What do you love about being a stone carver” is particularly illuminating: