I've always taken interest in my family's history, especially our Mother's Family from Appalachia & deeper research has brought me here. For being young I find many in my Family & close Friends are interred in cemeteries. I believe the first human funeral I attended was that of our Great-Great-Grandmother, Mrs. Sophia (Sophie MAM Neeley) Griffin when I was 3 years old at Horn Cemetery( 37°37'37.1"N 83°52'05.2"W ) in Lee County, Kentucky. The second was the funeral of our Great-Great-Grandfather Mr. Hubert McKinney when I was 5 at (correct spelling =) Beatty Place Cemetery (37°37'37.1"N 83°52'05.2"W), Lee Coounty, Ky.

I'm an Artist, a painter & sculptor among other mediums. I prefer to create artwork that has humans as the subject (figurative) yet I work with other subject matter too. I took painting people very seriously as a sixteen year old boy back in Indiana & decided at that time that I wanted to paint people's spirits in my work or at least include them in my artwork because “it is people who create most of the change on our planet.”

As a young man I enjoyed spending quite times at cemeteries that were often a good distance from loud cars or sirens of the nearby town or city. Early on I realized that these funerary grounds are great places, wrought with reverence, peace & solace. I would later note their historical connotation. The spaces were rich with calm and lacked in the abundance of change and chaos like that which lay outside the gates. I would go with friends in to cemeteries where we would be respectful yet celebratory of life. We would sometimes take lunch there, read poetry to one another, spend times talking or telling stories & sometimes make a dash through the sprinkler systems to cool off in hot days.

Later in life I've visited what turned out to be major historical cemeteries abroad (sic. London/Europe) where I would go to take my lunch and find myself enthralled with the surroundings. I've taken wonderful photos of gardens, the head stones, monuments, sarcophagi with bomb holes, buildings, wild vegetation & many animals.

While I was living in the southern U.S., in a then rich forested rural, country side, I found myself loured out to explore my new neighborhood which I would do from time to time. I was driving my motorcycle & all of the sudden I was visiting the near by church cemetery of Union Hill Alpharetta (34.098148, -84.232179). It was almost like I knew where I was going & I drove right to the spot. I felt as though it had called me to visit. It was quite small as far as occupying interred, the space felt raw yet kept with no surrounding fencing like now & no NEW McMasions right next to the cemetery YET. There was a massive 50 foot tall Oak tree in the northwest corner & in the evening you could hear the frogs from a nearby pond singing their evening tunes. It was here that I noticeably recognized a change in my perceptions of a cemetery space or the grounds of a resting place & what it meant to me. Here I saw the names inscribed, on meek granite or grand marble monuments of the locals. These closely clustered & well maintained plots, were in fact whole families which the surrounding country roads were still named after. The road names all made sense to me now. Smith Road the Smith's, Morris Road The Morris Family, Webb Road, the Webb's and so on. Some of the surrounding family's lands & old farm homes were being reclaimed by vegetation, now dilapidated & falling down. At night I would sometimes pass by & notice the flicker of a flame inside one the old homes, most likely from a stray person taking up camp in one or two country homes. These lands were now being sold to make way for residential apartment complexes as the area was fastly growing to fit more people, more restaurants, stores, business complexes and fast food chains. I often remarked to others that the in town area was a lot like a new colony planted on the moon. Almost every business I walked in to was less than 3 years old, they were sterile & pristine.

Sometimes in the Union Hill cemetery plots the parents & their children & their children's children along with their spouses would all be berried side by side. It felt very right, their culture was so much about home & this too felt at home, still perfect yet forgotten in so many ways. It was then that I realized as in every human being's life that for better or for worse, these people too had effected their communities, their lands, their surroundings & the world.

~Feile Case

I've always taken interest in my family's history, especially our Mother's Family from Appalachia & deeper research has brought me here. For being young I find many in my Family & close Friends are interred in cemeteries. I believe the first human funeral I attended was that of our Great-Great-Grandmother, Mrs. Sophia (Sophie MAM Neeley) Griffin when I was 3 years old at Horn Cemetery( 37°37'37.1"N 83°52'05.2"W ) in Lee County, Kentucky. The second was the funeral of our Great-Great-Grandfather Mr. Hubert McKinney when I was 5 at (correct spelling =) Beatty Place Cemetery (37°37'37.1"N 83°52'05.2"W), Lee Coounty, Ky.

I'm an Artist, a painter & sculptor among other mediums. I prefer to create artwork that has humans as the subject (figurative) yet I work with other subject matter too. I took painting people very seriously as a sixteen year old boy back in Indiana & decided at that time that I wanted to paint people's spirits in my work or at least include them in my artwork because “it is people who create most of the change on our planet.”

As a young man I enjoyed spending quite times at cemeteries that were often a good distance from loud cars or sirens of the nearby town or city. Early on I realized that these funerary grounds are great places, wrought with reverence, peace & solace. I would later note their historical connotation. The spaces were rich with calm and lacked in the abundance of change and chaos like that which lay outside the gates. I would go with friends in to cemeteries where we would be respectful yet celebratory of life. We would sometimes take lunch there, read poetry to one another, spend times talking or telling stories & sometimes make a dash through the sprinkler systems to cool off in hot days.

Later in life I've visited what turned out to be major historical cemeteries abroad (sic. London/Europe) where I would go to take my lunch and find myself enthralled with the surroundings. I've taken wonderful photos of gardens, the head stones, monuments, sarcophagi with bomb holes, buildings, wild vegetation & many animals.

While I was living in the southern U.S., in a then rich forested rural, country side, I found myself loured out to explore my new neighborhood which I would do from time to time. I was driving my motorcycle & all of the sudden I was visiting the near by church cemetery of Union Hill Alpharetta (34.098148, -84.232179). It was almost like I knew where I was going & I drove right to the spot. I felt as though it had called me to visit. It was quite small as far as occupying interred, the space felt raw yet kept with no surrounding fencing like now & no NEW McMasions right next to the cemetery YET. There was a massive 50 foot tall Oak tree in the northwest corner & in the evening you could hear the frogs from a nearby pond singing their evening tunes. It was here that I noticeably recognized a change in my perceptions of a cemetery space or the grounds of a resting place & what it meant to me. Here I saw the names inscribed, on meek granite or grand marble monuments of the locals. These closely clustered & well maintained plots, were in fact whole families which the surrounding country roads were still named after. The road names all made sense to me now. Smith Road the Smith's, Morris Road The Morris Family, Webb Road, the Webb's and so on. Some of the surrounding family's lands & old farm homes were being reclaimed by vegetation, now dilapidated & falling down. At night I would sometimes pass by & notice the flicker of a flame inside one the old homes, most likely from a stray person taking up camp in one or two country homes. These lands were now being sold to make way for residential apartment complexes as the area was fastly growing to fit more people, more restaurants, stores, business complexes and fast food chains. I often remarked to others that the in town area was a lot like a new colony planted on the moon. Almost every business I walked in to was less than 3 years old, they were sterile & pristine.

Sometimes in the Union Hill cemetery plots the parents & their children & their children's children along with their spouses would all be berried side by side. It felt very right, their culture was so much about home & this too felt at home, still perfect yet forgotten in so many ways. It was then that I realized as in every human being's life that for better or for worse, these people too had effected their communities, their lands, their surroundings & the world.

~Feile Case