David Bowie memorialized at Warhol’s Bethel Park gravesite
BETHEL PARK – A relatively obscure item in David Bowie’s musical catalogue is a 1971 tribute to one of his inspirations, a song called “Andy Warhol.”
So it was appropriate that an Upper St. Clair resident chose to memorialize the recently deceased rock star at the Bethel Park gravesite of the pop art icon.
Artist Madelyn Roehrig was at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery during a light snowfall Saturday afternoon to greet visitors who arrived to pay tribute to the giants in their respective fields.
“With David Bowie passing, I thought this was a nice way to remember him,” she explained as she placed a jar in his memory on top of Warhol’s stone, between the Campbell’s soup cans already there, to pay homage to one of his best-known works.
Inside the jar were chocolate kisses, each with a saying by Bowie attached, that she offered to those who stopped by the cemetery.
Among them were Bill, Judy and Teresa Harrold, who were visiting the area from Richmond, Va. Judy, a Bethel Park native, counts herself among Bowie’s millions of fans.
“I was really sad to hear he passed away,” she said about the announcement of his death on Jan. 10, just two days after his 69th birthday.
Teresa, her daughter, is more of a Warhol fan. For her high school art class, she is working on a project based on his varied-color silkscreen prints of celebrities, most notably Marilyn Monroe. Teresa’s subject is Justin Bieber.
Roehrig, who also placed a Bowie-inspired gnome figure at the grave, actually is conducting an ongoing Warhol-themed multimedia project there: ”Figments: Conversations With Andy,” which had its origins in a long-ago project on involving terrorism, death and disaster.
“I started looking at artists who worked with death-disaster, and of course, Andy Warhol was one of them,” Roehrig explained. “Through my research, I found out he’s buried here, and I live three miles down the road. So I had to come here and have a chat with him about my situation with this art project, because I needed some help. I believe in talking to people who have passed on, and I thought maybe he could help me. And he did.”
She continues to get inspiration in that manner.
Since Warhol’s burial in 1987, fans continuously have placed items at his grave, including the soup cans, which Roehrig saw on her first visit.
“I came the next day, and in about a week, another soup can showed up,” she said. “So that was telling me I’m not the only one coming here. But I wanted to know why they’re coming here.”
To find out, she leaves a portfolio envelope at the site, with instructions for those who are visiting to write messages or draw pictures.
“I’ve probably gone through 60 of these, if not more,” she said about the envelopes. “I’ve probably gotten close to 1,400 notes, from all over the world.”
As she further elucidates on her website:
“Andy Warhol said in a statement about death that he wanted his tombstone to say ‘Figment.’ His statement opened up a door not only for my own imagination, but for so many other visitors to his grave. After six years of photographing Andy’s tombstone every day, archiving items and handwritten notes for him left at his grave, and shooting video and making movies of visitors ‘talking’ to him or performing for him, I have found a global community of people creating their own ‘figment’ of Andy.”
Two EarthCam cameras have been streaming Warhol’s gravesite live since August 2013, to coincide with what would have been his 85th birthday. Visit www.earthcam.com/usa/pennsylvania/pittsburgh/warhol/.