The Sculptor & The Child Muse: Special Event

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“John – it’s an exact likeness.”

These words were barely found formed by tearful parents, Wales and Frances Watson following the marble statue unveiling of their daughter, “Little Gracie” by sculptor John Walz in Bonaventure Cemetery between 1891-1894. According to Walz, they then turned and left the cemetery. For Walz, it was no less emotional as Gracie Watson had become perhaps the closest thing he’d known to a child of his own. He was now 45, unmarried, and the biggest emptiness in himself was having achieved so much of The American Dream but as a man, there was an emptiness of a family of his own. Gracie had meant the world to him, the friendship of her parents formed inside of the hotel they owned where Gracie played and entertained for nearly 6 years of her own life – The Pulaski House Hotel – the hollow halls would soon come to haunt them all. In ways, only time and a statue would bring healing.

Walz Sculpts Little Gracie To Life by Stephen Kasun

This coming Saturday, July 13, 2024, we celebrate the 142nd Birthday of Little Gracie Watson but also the life and works of the sculptor buried almost a straight line from her a few hundred yards away, John Walz. The cemetery called Bonaventure might have another name – The John Walz Art Museum – for the countless works he spread across the many acres, defining it visually, setting the standard, like no other artist. Together, Watson & Walz, are inseparable figures to Bonaventure Cemetery and no one presents that quite like Shannon Scott Tours & Events! Your host, Shannon Scott, will present some rarely-seen objects tied to the lives of Gracie Watson and John Walz. One lucky attendee will receive this original, framed painting “Walz Sculpts Little Gracie To Life,” by highly respected Savannah artist, Stephen Kasun! This artwork is a first-of-its-kind and will be treasured by the recipient! All attendees will receive a signed event poster along with very special birthday baked goodies that you’ll simply die for!
TICKETS: www.bonaafterhours.com 

 

 

5 Nights of Halloween 2023 – Evolution, Full Moons & More (Part Two)

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“For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

I’m not a particularly scare-fest person but I like a good cemetery. I’ve celebrated them for as long as I can remember. My “dark side” was shaped by being an introspective child who never craved scary experiences. I preferred reading about others who were famed for plumbing darker subjects. But I recall being fascinated, if not thrilled by Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Three Detectives” to the point of obsession. I found a kind of lust for the novel and film, “Escape To Witch Mountain,” and was delighted by “Return To Witch Mountain” and finally “Beyond Witch Mountain” I recall some sort of gothic esthetic was born in me, a strange passionate sensation that shaped my sense of life beyond explanation upon discovering the film “From The Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler.” That one somewhat terrified me as much as it intrigued same time and think it was a mistake to watch it alone on a Saturday in my basement. Throw in “Something Wicked Way This Comes,” along with endless episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of, and every Hardy Boys’ book with just a touch of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, and there’s not much more that one needs to understand who I was made into well before high school. In fact, if you’d told me by age 13 that there was nothing else past some Chronicles of Narnia and a few Stephen King books to come along and at that moment I’d been given the option of being locked in a room with just all of those things for the rest of my life, I’d 100% snatched that key from the offering hand to never be heard from again! But as no such opportunity or framing of the world was presented as such, I drifted on to become the artsy goth kid who eventually took a job in a Victorian cemetery in my hometown. And the rest is his-story so to say. I became The Cemetery Man of my own design.