Artist Andrew Grum Carr on His Lakewood Residency
In every season, Lakewood Cemetery offers a quiet, attentive beauty—mist rising through spring rain, summer’s sharp greens and powder-puff skies, the soft hush of winter snow.
For Andrew Grum
Carr, that steady unfolding of seasons became more than scenery. During his year as a Lakewood Artist in Residence, the landscape became a companion: something to return to, sit with and slowly come to know.
Over nine months, Andrew created An Opening—a body of work composed of nine large watercolor paintings and a meditative narrative essay. Each painting corresponds to a season at Lakewood Cemetery, while the essay traces the emotional reverberations of an earlier visit. Years before, Andrew, then teaching at a middle school, had led a field trip of students to Lakewood’s Memorial Chapel. The vist came shortly after the death of a student by suicide. In the quiet of the chapel, conversation opened—about grief, memory and the fragile, often unspoken bonds that hold communities together. The experience lingered with Andrew, eventually becoming the emotional center of An Opening.
“I stretched everything out,” Andrew says of the residency year. “I used all the time I had—to paint and write, to let the work unfold. I’m really grateful for that time that Lakewood gifted me.”
Weather as Muse
Andrew’s paintings trace the full arc of Minnesota weather: spring’s tentative growth, summer’s brilliance and sudden storms, autumn’s warmth, winter’s contemplative stillness. Throughout the year, he returned to Lakewood again and again, sketching and photographing scenes that would later reappear in watercolor.
“There are certain places I kept coming back to,” he says. “What I thought I understood would change with each season. It was as if the landscape had different personalities each time.”
Working within a consistent format—each painting the same size and shape—became a quiet challenge. “Pretty quickly, I ran out of tricks,” Andrew explains. “That pushed me to invent. I was forced to see more deeply.”
Slowly, a visual vocabulary emerged: young trees wrapped in green watering bags, clouds after a summer storm mirrored in the Reflecting Pool near the Garden Mausoleum, the crisp outline of a snow-covered memorial—a concrete draped robe dusted with light. “When you work with the same subject long enough,” he says, “you stop trying to reproduce what you see. You start working with what you remember—what you feel.”
Writing as Witness
If painting allowed Andrew to stay present with the seasons, writing pulled him backward in time. The essay at the heart of An Opening begins with that student visit to Lakewood, but it doesn’t stop there. “I was surprised by how many other memories surfaced,” Andrew says. “Some from when I was in junior high myself. Not everything made it into the final piece, but the writing kept giving more.”
The essay became the most ambitious writing project he’s ever undertaken—one that grapples with suicide, teaching, grief and care. “I tried to approach it with honesty, but also gentleness,” he says. “There’s vulnerability in sharing it.”
Having time mattered. The essay wasn’t rushed toward resolution. “The process helped me move beyond my first reactions,” Andrew reflects. “I didn’t want to just write what I already thought I knew.”
A Different Kind of Trust
What surprised Andrew most during his residency wasn’t the work itself, but the way it was supported. “I really felt the trust Lakewood placed in me,” he says. “I wasn’t expected to constantly produce or host events. I was given time and space to go deep.”
That spaciousness shaped the project in ways Andrew hadn’t anticipated. “Both the paintings and the essay became more personal than I imagined,” he says. “I don’t think that depth would have been possible without that kind of support.”
A Book, a Gallery and an Invitation
The culmination of Andrew’s residency, An Opening, will be on view at Lakewood’s Welcome Center from February 2 through March 10. The exhibition includes all nine watercolor paintings, along with printed books that pair the artwork with Andrew’s essay—inviting visitors to move between image and text, season and memory. “It lets people experience the whole arc of the project,” Andrew says. “To walk through the seasons, through grief and reflection, and maybe find something of their own.”
As the exhibition opens, he feels both anticipation and tenderness. “These works have been very personal,” he says. “Now I’m handing them over. But that’s what makes it meaningful—it’s not just about me. It’s about what happens when someone else steps into that space.”
Visit An Opening at the Welcome Center, Mondays through Saturdays, from 8 AM – 4:30PM. Learn more about the exhibition.
