Phil Webb works the night shift for a company that makes communications cable. On his own time, he is a monument maker in South Hoisington, Kansas. To date, Webb has designed and created about a dozen painted concrete memorials marking graves in his hometown cemetery. A few of these were commissioned works, but he made most of them to remember those who, many years after their deaths, had not been given a permanent cemetery memorial. Far from the typical homemade concrete grave monuments that emulate store-bought ones in shape and inscription, Webb’s are richly painted sculptural tableaus that seek to capture and convey key aspects of the personalities, interests, and professions of those they remember. In this paper, I’ll consider the body of Webb’s monument production within the context of his larger body of creative endeavors. More than cemetery memorials alone, his work also includes painted murals and the ornamented landscape he has been developing at his home. In addition, I’ll place his work within the context of a Kansas tradition of figural concrete sculpture that includes the ambitious polychromed Garden of Eden environment that S.P. Dinsmoor built at his home in Lucas a century ago, as well as the concrete Civil War monument that David Lester created in Kinsley in 1917.
About the presenterDennis Montagna
Dr. Dennis Montagna directs the National Park Service’s Monument Research & Preservation Program. Based at the Park Service’s Philadelphia Region Office, the program provides comprehensive assistance in the interpretation and care of historic cemeteries, outdoor sculpture and public monuments to managers of National Park sites and to other constituents nationwide. He is a Trustee of the Association for Gravestone Studies and serves as the organization’s Vice President. He holds a BA degree in Studio Art from Florida State University, a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D from the University of Delaware.