BARRE, Vt. (WCAX) – Granite embedded in the landscape of Barre is as well known as it is ancient, but lesser known are the people who carve it.
Many women have helped make Barre’s granite industry what it is today, but experts in the field say women more often work behind a desk than with carving tools and a slab of granite.
One Varre resident hopes to change that.
Chunks of rock and humming tools fill artist Heather Milne Ritchie’s barre studio. Her canvas is a 3-ton slab of granite.
“This is a gravestone that’s going to Hope Cemetery to be set in the spring,” said Milne Ritchie.
Milne Ritchie formed Bonnie Wee LLC 10 years ago to tell stories through granite.
She carves headstones among other creations, turning blank rocks into personalized memorials.
“I invited the customers to come into the studio to see the stone, to meet me, to talk about their loved one…Sometimes I’ll ask people, ‘What kind of music did they like to listen to?’ I’ll play that music while I’m working to kind of get in a zone to feel closer to them,” she said.
It’s rare enough to know how to carve granite, a particularly hard rock with a shrinking base of capable carvers.
Milne Ritchie bucks another trend.
Reporter Sophia Thomas: You’re the only full-time female granite carver in Vermont?
Milne Ritchie: Yes.
After years of working as an apprentice, she wanted to teach other women how to carve granite.
“How can I bring other people into it so that we don’t lose it?”
She takes on a Vermont folklife center intern every year…High school students and adults like Arielle Edelman who want to follow in Milne Ritchie’s footsteps.
Sophia Thomas: If you hadn’t had a female mentor like Heather, do you think you ever would have gotten into this?
Edelman: No. Definitely not. I think it’s an intimidating craft to begin with…So much of what has made it appealing and feel accessible and made me want to keep going is Heather and the environment that she’s created here.”
Milne Ritchie says many of the women who apprentice are carving out time to learn amidst work and family life.
She tries to make it more accessible by lowering studio rental costs or simply asking for help around the studio in exchange for lessons.
“Meeting people where they are, at not just a skill level, but a lifestyle level,” she said.
Milne Ritchie sources lots of her granite right from Barre, and many creations stay in Vermont.
