Alison Nastasi, originally from New York City, resides in Philadelphia and received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has been practicing the art of gravestone rubbing and photography since she was a teenager. Fascinated by the sculpture, epitaphs and natural environment of a cemetery, Alison spends much of her time exploring the historical cemeteries of Philadelphia and finding hidden gems in her travels of the surrounding area.
The Living Lyre takes its name from a stanza in the famous poem by Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, written in 1750. It is believed that Gray wrote the poem in the graveyard of a church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England. This is the same site that Alison’s grandmother, Lillian, made her first gravestone rubbing over forty years ago.
Alison is currently documenting and leading the preservation of a one hundred fifty year old cemetery near Philadelphia.
Posts
