The Weeping Angel of Metairie

The Weeping Angel of Metairie

The series incorporates a variety of media, including photography, resin, acrylic, and oil on wood, 2018 - present

Series Description:
This series of paintings is inspired by an ethereal encounter with a hidden guardian of sorrow—an angel in perpetual mourning, locked away in a New Orleans mausoleum. Tucked away inside the Chapman H. Hyams mausoleum in Metairie Cemetery, this sculpture, bathed in blue light from stained glass, embodies the weight of grief, frozen in time.

The journey to find her was a pilgrimage of sorts—an adventure through history, art, and personal reflection. The angel is rarely seen in full; her form is obscured behind wrought iron gates, her sorrow only glimpsed in profile. Yet, through a small, mysteriously cut hole in the stained glass, a new perspective was revealed. Positioned too high to see through, the hole in the glass offered no direct view—only through my camera, held high above my head, did I glimpse what lay inside.  Raising a camera blindly through the opening, I captured what the eye could not—a portrait of grief seen through a new perspective of fractured light.

Each piece in this series is built from these photographs, layered with paint to heighten the interplay of shadow and illumination. The angel is not just a memorial for one soul but a monument to loss itself—grief made tangible. When I first sought her out, I did not yet understand that grief is something we carry, a companion that shapes us. Now, these works serve as both a tribute and a meditation on the nature of mourning, memory, and the beauty found within loss.