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Nothing More Personal, Passionate and Rewarding than Designing Memorials

September 6, 2001

COLD SPRING, Minn., Sept. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Designing memorials for people who have passed away may not strike one as the most gratifying of vocations. But for Christi Becker of Cold Spring Granite Company, there is nothing more rewarding.

"The most rewarding and hardest monument I did touched me deeply," says Becker, artist and custom graphic designer of the largest granite quarrier and manufacturer of memorials and monuments in the United States. "But it meant something special for me to know that it would bring some peace of mind and comfort to the surviving members of the family."

Becker is referring to a tragedy that occurred four years ago. A mother in northern Minnesota, after picking up her 3-year-old daughter from day care, drove into a creek during a blizzard and was found frozen with her daughter in a nearby field. Becker sketched the portraits of the mother and daughter for a monument in a playground dedicated to their memories.

Becker sketches a wide variety of designs, including angels and images that reflect lifestyles, hobbies, jobs and homes of people who have passed away. A design for a late farmer included horses, six flying geese representing his children, a church and a tractor in rows of corn with letters below saying, "straight rows." The farmer was a stickler for hewing straight rows of corn.

The husband of a late waitress had Becker design a memorial with the type of apron that his wife wore at work. Hammers and wrenches are popular with carpenters and plumbers just as military emblems and badges are for soldiers and police officers.

Several years ago Becker perfected a memorial design of a child being led by Jesus up a stairway to heaven- a rough idea that was drawn with stick figures by a teenager days before she died in an unfortunate accident.

With a hand diamond etching tool and a pencil, Becker can create designs and scenes for etching on high-quality granite memorials including detailed portraits and figures that seem to come alive.

"If I tell people I work on memorial designs, many draw blank faces," Becker explains. "When I tell them I am an artist and craftsperson telling stories on stone about people the way family members want to remember their loved ones, I get a different reaction. Art doesn't get any more personal, passionate and rewarding than that."

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For more information and to arrange an interview with Becker, contact Linda Mathiasen at 320-685-5068 or LMathiasen@coldspringgranite.com.