Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public.
This story was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a text version of the story below.
BARRE — For more than 150 years, granite has shaped life in Barre. Generations of central Vermonters have quarried, cut and carved the stone.
Today, only a handful of artists still carve granite by hand. One of them is Heather Milne Ritchie. She’s keeping the tradition alive — and bringing more women into the craft.
Milne Ritchie has lived in central Vermont for most of her life, and she’s been carving stone for more than 25 years. She makes everything from memorial headstones to fine art sculptures to decorative benches for public parks.
But Milne Ritchie didn't always know she’d become a granite carver.
As a young artist, she worked in a lot of different mediums — fiberglass, wood, plaster — but she’d never thought about carving stone.
That is, until one day in 1999, when a former co-worker called to tell her that a prominent Barre granite carver was looking for an apprentice. Was she interested?
"I said 'absolutely,'" Milne Ritchie said. "I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn a new skill that could possibly lead to a professional career."
The carver looking for an apprentice was George Kurjanowicz, and Milne Ritchie got the job.
“He believed in me enough that he gave me a chance to hop on board and earn some money, and I stayed with him for 15 years," she said.
Then, in 2020, Milne Ritchie opened her own granite carving studio in Barre. Now, she mentors up-and-coming stone carvers like Kurjanowicz mentored her.
“To continue drawing people into this kind of work, you really do need to be inclusive,” she said. “You really do need to be understanding. And that's generally not the mentality that goes with this trade.”
At any given time, Milne Ritchie is mentoring a handful of carvers — both formally and informally. And she’s specifically focused on mentoring women.
“Having my own studio has allowed me to be able to teach the way I want to teach, and to share this with people in a really safe and comfortable way,” she said.
Zahra Dana is one of Milne Ritchie’s mentees. Dana was looking for a career change when she received funding from Vermont Folklife to apprentice with Milne Ritchie. Dana says she loves the vibe of Milne Ritchie’s studio.
“This industry is so male dominated — a lot of industries are, honestly,” she said. “It's just cool to be like, ‘this is women working and creating.’ And it's just so chill, and it's super supportive, too.”
Mentee Arielle Edelman feels the same way. She says the barrier to entry in stone carving is high, so mentorship is what makes it possible for beginners like her.
“I think what [Milne Ritchie] is doing with the mentorship, and specifically focusing on mentoring women, is just like this unicorn, magical thing,” she said. “No one else is doing that. Very few people are mentoring at all. It’s hard to take a chance on people.”
Another mentee, Carrie Bagalio, was working in the granite industry when a friend told her about Milne Ritchie’s studio.
“I just wandered in one day, and she said she was willing to apprentice with me,” Bagalio said.
Bagalio is now working with Milne Ritchie to build up more of her skills. Bagalio is a fourth-generation Vermonter, and her family’s hometown is planning to build a statue to honor her great-grandfather.
“And I’m hoping I’ll be trained enough by then to get to work on it, at least a little bit,” she said.
For Milne Ritchie, mentoring is all about creating an environment where people feel empowered enough to try something new.
“The people that I'm bringing in have a commitment to the stone,” she said. “And they have a commitment to themselves, to grow their skills and to develop them to a point where they can use them out in the world, and share what they're making with people.”
She says her plan for the next decade is to keep running her studio the way she’s running it now: surrounded by creative people, who love stone as much as she does.
