Jurors select 90 inspired artworks from hundreds of artist-made cremation urns and personal memorials entered into 5th biennial funerary art event. Four guest artists add a dozen more.

When three curious minds got together in the garden behind WillowWood Market and Café in the Northern California wine country hamlet of Graton in October 2000, we had no idea what to expect in the course of conceiving and then organizing the first international competition and exhibition seeking original artist-made cremation urns, funerary vessels, and scattering containers in any and all media. These would be objects that were intended to shelter people, pets, even wishes and dreams…briefly before dispersing their contents or throughout time.

It’s been a dizzying and dazzling experience ever since. Not an easy one, for anyone, but an adventure in every respect, for sure. Being a pioneer is not for the timid. Combining the subjects of art and death and inviting the public to the conversation is a tough story to toss out at the dinner table. Yet now, 10 years later and on the eve of opening FUNERIA’s 5th biennial Ashes to Art exhibition, we are proudly offering the world another chance to see and choose from a broad range of superb artworks that artists are creating in a still emerging genre.

It is one that is providing many more artists, worldwide, with new opportunities to sell thoughtful, beautiful, provocative and functional work to honor our time on earth. Through the attention and respect that the exhibitions have earned in mainstream media, we are also demonstrating the artist’s role and value as interpreters of modern times, of character, as story tellers, memory documentarians and mirrors of ourselves.

As FUNERIA and our Art Honors Life gallery are now preparing for the October 23rd artists opening reception of selected work, and a year-long online presentation of all finalists who were chosen by our jurors, the gravity of what three unique individuals, their friends, family and a host of volunteers have created in 10 years time is sinking in. The quality of the work that has been entered in each succeeding biennial competition continues to enthrall as the prestige of this event has filtered beyond art school and foundry corridors to fire the imaginations of both emerging artists and those at the peak of their careers.

Thank you to all artists, family members, friends, volunteers, supporters, sponsors, visitors and buyers at the exhibitions over the years who have shared the story of what they’ve seen at FUNERIA’s Ashes to Art events, how their visits made them feel, and recognized that unique, handmade, beautifully crafted artist-made urns for ashes and mementos are not only helpful when they’re needed, but deeply meaningful as well.

Of note:

For the first time, metal leads as the media of choice with 23 pieces from precious to steel, bronze, copper, forged, cast and etched.

They were followed by ceramic, fiber (biodegradable paper and wood), mixed media, stone and glass.