GREENFIELD – Cheryl Anne Lorance knew she wanted to be an artist from the time she was around 5 years old.
Little did she know her work would one day be set in stone.
The Irvington artist has devoted her summer to carving the 10 limestone benches that will serve as a focal point for the Riley Arts Trail, a cultural trail that will soon loop through downtown Greenfield.
Expected to be complete in October 2025, the 10-foot-wide trail will pay homage to the city’s arts and cultural scene as well as its most celebrated native son – James Whitcomb Riley. The nationally renowned poet, who was born in Greenfield in 1849, plays a huge role in the city’s heritage.
Lorance considers it an honor to have been tapped to set Riley’s homespun poems into stone.
The City of Greenfield hired her to create 10 limestone benches – 3 feet wide and 18 inches high – to portray not just excerpts of his poetry but whimsical illustrations to go along with them.
It’s been a dream job for Lorance, who earned both a bachelor’s of fine arts and a master’s degree in sculpture from Ball State University.
“It’s going great, I’m really enjoying it,” said Lorance, seated in the art studio in her home – a historic bungalow in Irvington.
She was taking a quick break from carving one of the benches out in her yard on a sunny afternoon.
The limestone blocks were delivered to her home from Bedford. Pre-cut, each one was a solid half-ton block of stone measuring 3 feet wide, 18 inches tall and 18 inches wide, a nice size for two people to have a seat.
Alternating between hand tools and a pressurized pneumatic chisel, Lorance has been methodically chipping away at each slab of limestone – carving in intricate details to bring Riley’s poems to life.
While she grew up less than an hour away from Greenfield, just west of Muncie, Lorance admits she wasn’t familiar with Riley’s work until taking on the limestone bench project designed to commemorate him.
“But I think that’s the whole point of these benches is for Greenfield to have this revival of Riley’s poetry,” she said.
“His words are very important to me. That’s why they had to be included in the design of the bench, so people can read these little excerpts and then feel motivated to go read the whole poem,” she said.
Lorance hopes her carefully crafted benches will help bring Riley’s poetry to life for generations to come.
Coming up with which 10 poems to feature on the benches was the fun part, said the artist, who got some help from Greenfield city officials spearheading the arts trail.
“Because he’s written so many poems, I had to read quite a bit of his work to see what spoke to me,” said Lorance, who picked up a book of his complete works – some 1,00 poems – to do her research.
“It’s like a dream project for me because I love caring, but I’m also an illustrator, so this has combined both of those worlds for me because I’m getting to create a picture or image that’s three-dimensional while also creating a narrative, which is Riley’s poetry” she said.
Lorance said she’s quite pleased with how the benches are turning out so far, and can’t wait to see them in place along the Riley Arts Trail. Each one will be positioned so that Riley’s prose can be read by visitors walking in either direction along the trail.
While Lorance is fully engrossed in the project, it’s far from her first foray into commissioned stone work.
She did a series of 12 benches for the Ft. Benjamin Harrison cultural campus in Lawrence, and created a stone piece to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the grist mill at Spring Mill State Park. She also produced a granite piece for a cultural trail in New Hampshire a few years ago.
“I’ve worked with a lot of materials, and they all have their own wonderful properties, but I love working with stone. I like the actual act of carving and hammering away on it. It’s kind of mesmerizing,” she said.
To learn more about Lorance’s work, which includes not only sculpting but painting and drawing, visit cherylalorance.com or the Cheryl Anne Lorance Studio page on Facebook.
