Riverside Cemetery in Brooklyn Centre has been serving as a final resting place for Clevelanders such as playwright Avery Hopwood and blues musician Robert Lockwood for nearly 150 years.
The cemetery will host its annual free music and arts festival on July 27 from 1 to 6 p.m. with food trucks, vendors and live music.
“If somebody wanted to just come and listen to music in a peaceful, serene cemetery, they could do so,” said Riverside administrator Jamie Lynne Owens.
Owens hopes to connect Clevelanders who’ve never been to the cemetery to its most notable residents and to the Victorian history buried in the grounds.
“It’s so important that we have people that fall in love with the cemetery and want to see it prosper,” she said. “That’s one of the goals I have with the music and arts festival, is to just get people in here. You know, I have so many people come up to me that say, ‘We’ve never even been inside of here, I’ve lived here for 50 years.’ They never even knew this was here.”
Owens said she wants to “show them the beauty that is within this Victorian cemetery and help preserve it.”
‘Dead bug art isn’t for everyone…it is OK to like things that might seem weird’
Vendor Sam Huffman of The One with The Bugs will have her entomology art for sale at the festival.
“I’ve always been into art,” she said, “and I’ve been collecting oddities and bug art for years. So I decided to just make my own.”
All Huffman’s items are hand painted, and she said the bugs are ethically sourced. “When I order a bug, it does not come already ‘spread.’ I have to rehydrate the bug, and then pin it in the position I want it to be in, which can definitely take time and patience. And to answer my No. 1 question I get from people, yes, every single bug is real!
“‘Dead bug art’ isn’t for everyone,” Huffman said. “I like to make what I make to show people…that it is OK to like things that might seem weird.
“Bugs can be creepy and scary, but they can also be beautiful,” she explained. “The hope I have for my art is to show that death brings out the beauty in life. Their beauty will forever be showcased now for people to see.”
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Tours designed to ‘enlighten and not frighten’
Canalway Partners will be at the festival to talk about their Buried History Days, a series of events coming up in October.
Mera Cardenas, the executive director of Canalway Partners, said the series of history-focused tours that run from Oct. 23 to Oct. 26 are designed to “enlighten and not frighten.”
She said part of Canalway’s mission is to “connect people to place, and touring historic cemeteries is a very illustrative way of connecting people, first, to people who inspired the place.”
Honoring local playwright Avery Hopwood at Riverside Cemetery
Ben Mihalek and other members of Brooklyn Area Pride will have a booth set up at the festival to talk about the work they do. They will also be assisting visitors with parking.
Avery Hopwood, a 1920s playwright who was openly gay, is buried at Riverside. Mihalek said Brooklyn Area Pride adopted and maintains his gravesite and has “embraced the history of somebody so early on in time that came out openly.”
Riverside Cemetery hosts tours and other events throughout the year. To learn more about these, or the festival, visit their website.
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