In keeping with the spirit of life

JUST inside the front door of Maria Munroe’s house in Venice sits an abstract sterling silver sculpture of a star. It is a luminous, off-kilter, asteroidal shape, with a satiny shimmer that invites caress. Sealed inside are the cremated remains of Jeffrey Blumberg, a New York silver expert who died in 1996.

OK, the concept may be a bit hard to grasp. Munroe uses cremains in sculptures she designs as memorials that surviving loved ones can live with in their homes.

Every tabletop, floor space and corner of Munroe’s home is filled with works, large and small, from her ongoing exploration of funerary art, along with pieces from her recent show at Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica. Many of these, including the Blumberg star, were lent by Munroe’s clients for the exhibit, and are awaiting their return.

Some are vessels that contain the ashes of the deceased. Others -- lead crystal and ceramic pieces -- had some ashes mixed in as the piece was being made (which is legal), so that the cremains become an integral part of the material. Other items include meditation beads, crystal orbs and glass bricks. Her works range from $3,000 to $30,000.

Munroe, who is wearing a crystal disc pendant that contains some of her Aunt Conchita’s ashes, is one of very few artists who devote their entire output to working with cremains, says gallery owner Laurie Frank, who met the artist and first saw the sculptures about five years ago.

“The mind-blowing part for me,” says Frank, “was realizing that the glass sculptures were actually made with human ash as part of the glass-blowing process -- and that they also act as containers for the ash -- so the deceased person is in the urn and also of it.”

Munroe’s art is part of a larger movement that reflects changing spiritual and practical attitudes about death and its rituals in the U.S.

As traditional burial space becomes less available and more expensive, more people turn to cremation as an alternative. Most religions accept cremation. “Seven years ago, no state had a 50% cremation rate,” says Jack Springer, executive director of the Cremation Assn. of North America, which tracks cremation statistics. “Today, cremation rates are over 60% in Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii -- places where people tend to retire.” California reached 51% in 2004, he says. And the country as a whole reached almost 31% that year.

From a spiritual perspective, the idea of staying close to a loved one’s cremains -- keeping ashes at home in specially designed vessels, or wearing them in special “keepsake” jewelry -- is gaining favor. A number of artistic alternatives to traditional urns and boxes are offered on websites for the mass market (see related story). Munroe’s work, however, is not mass or commercial. She creates only two or three major sculptures a year, she says.

THE artist’s 3,200-square-foot home with its book-lined dining room is filled from the Saltillo tile floors to the high ceilings with paintings and drawings collected by Munroe and her husband, private art dealer Aldis Browne.

Munroe, 59, is tall and vibrant with green eyes, even features, and an almost palpable sense of fun. When she talks of meeting her husband 30 years ago, and their romantic world travels, she sounds much like a teenager describing a crush. She wears no visible makeup, and her gray hair is drawn straight back off her face, as if to emphasize her openness.

She says she did a good deal of research on those travels, scouring museums and libraries to learn how various cultures have dealt with death through the centuries. She’s not quite sure why the subject has fascinated her.

“At first, I worked around it, because it is such a big, powerful, frightening topic, and so little is known.” Then she began to create art that was inhabited by ashes of the many animals she had lived with and loved as pets.

On the hearth of her living room fireplace is a handsome copper tub, filled with white sand. Nestled on the sand is a copper oval, inside of which are the ashes of her beloved guinea pig, Porchetta, whom she refers to as her muse. It’s kinetic, she says; the tub’s bottom is a rounded rather than flat. Touch it anywhere, and the tub will gently rock -- a motion her guinea pig apparently loved.

It wasn’t until after the death of her father in 1990 that she tackled the work she believes she was meant to do. “Any person, at some point in his or her life, has to ask themselves: What’s next? I wanted to address that question from an artist’s perspective,” she says. “But I didn’t feel I could even attempt to work on a piece that involved a person unless I had experienced deep grief myself.”

Her father, a career military man, was cremated and buried at sea. She was able to get three thick locks of his white hair, and designed a glass sculpture for each lock -- for her mother, her brother and herself.

Her next work was for a woman who had lost her mother. Munroe created a simple wooden box to hold a blown lead crystal vessel, which contains the ashes. “It’s very private and very simple, and it lives on a table in the daughter’s bedroom. She can open it or not.”

The work she has designed for her own ashes, when that time comes, is a piece that stands in one corner of her large and airy living room. Tall, narrow and angular, it is built of ebonized pear wood and has a small oil portrait of Munroe by California artist Stephen Douglas on its front.

A lid at the top opens to reveal a large, hollowed-out oval of aromatic bay laurel, where her ashes will reside.

Munroe’s works, which she calls “Eturns,” are commissioned by people before they die, or by friends and family after a loved one has expired.

Art dealer Misako Mitsui of San Rafael says her husband, Yorikatsu, was 49 when he was diagnosed with cancer. He died eight months later. The couple had been friends with Munroe and Browne for years, she says. “And at this tragic time in my life I turned to them. I said I would like a beautiful container that can hold my husband’s ashes.” Munroe and Browne gave the widow one they had created for Browne. “It is a beautiful, square ceramic, gray-white, with a crackled finish,” Mitsui says. “It has a very beautiful lid with two holes that sort of reminds me of the Japanese shrine.”

The urn was the focal point of her husband’s memorial service in San Rafael, she says, after which it was taken to the family temple in Kyoto, Japan.

Munroe says the concept for each piece comes from what she knows of the deceased, and of the survivors who want to live with it. Blumberg’s silver star, for example, was commissioned by Nancy Friedman, a good friend and executor of his estate. It was crafted by a silversmith to Munroe’s specifications, and sits on a low pedestal that is actually an unfolded leather box.

The box, made by a master bookbinder with whom Munroe also collaborates, can be assembled to look like a handsome decorative object. When closed, it hides the silver piece completely. “The star is a very powerful, and obviously a very personal piece,” Munroe explains. “When its owner doesn’t want it exposed, it lives in this beautiful leather box that can sit on a bedroom table.”

WHEN the Munroe show -- the artist’s second -- ended in June, Frank says a 75-year-old woman called to order a work that would allow her children to have something beautiful that would literally be a part of her after she’s gone. “That really represents a whole sort of systemic change in people’s attitudes,” Frank says.

She didn’t expect the show to be a huge success or moneymaker, she says. “People have to be willing to face their own mortality or the mortality of someone close to them. They have to have enough money and be willing to invest in something that might not happen in 10, 20 or 30 years. And they must have a celebratory sense of life after death. I think it’s a discussion that will increasingly take place, and this show began that discussion for a lot of people who saw it.”

Munroe does not advertise or publicize her work. “People who need me seem to find me.” And while the idea of art meant to preserve both the memory and the cremains of a deceased person is ancient, it has gained new currency in the past few years.

Frank says the most poignant response to the show was from a man who happened upon it accidentally, and seemed emotionally overwhelmed. “It turns out he’d been driving around for two years with his adored father’s ashes in the trunk of his car. He simply couldn’t decide what was appropriate to do with them.”

Bettijane Levine can be reached at bettijane.levine@latimes.com

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Enduring memorials

Just a few years back, there weren’t a lot of creative options for placement of cremains at home. Today a variety of unusual, artist-designed urns, sculptures and other receptacles are available to those who prefer to keep the ashes of their loved ones close by. Other options include jewelry and small accessories made specifically to hold a small portion of the ashes that can be worn close to the body. And, increasingly, there are new ways to incorporate ashes in the actual making of an art object.

Artistic urns. Funeria represents artists who design original vessels and funerary urns to contain ashes for display at home or placement in mausoleums or columbaria. Some are immediately available, others may take several weeks to produce. www.funeria.com.

Keepsake jewelry. Many companies make jewelry and small accessories in which to seal a small portion of cremains. Styles include key chains, rosaries, hearts, crosses, lockets, cylinders, tiny urns -- many meant to be worn as pendants. For websites offering such memorial merchandise, search for “keepsake jewelry” and “cremation jewelry.”

Ashes to diamonds. LifeGem creates certified diamonds from the carbon in a few ounces of cremated remains. www.lifegem.com.

Biodegradable vessels. For those who plan to distribute cremains at a special spot, some companies offer array of urns, boxes and other containers that disintegrate in the ocean or earth. This biodegradable feature ensures that ashes reach an intended place instead of being dispersed by the wind or other elements. To find websites, search for “biodegradable urns.”

-- Bettijane Levine