Last month, N and I flew to LA to attend the opening reception for Remembering Animals: Rituals, Artifacts & Narratives in Contemporary Art at CSUN Art Galleries in nearby Northridge. I had seven pieces in the show, which I’m so glad I got to see – it was truly beautiful.

I started photographing pet cemeteries shortly after my last trip to LA in February of 2016, so of course I had to see the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park & Crematorium, also known as S.O.P.H.I.E. (Save Our Pets’ History In Eternity). The grounds contain the “dead pets of the stars” – Valentino’s dog, Charlie Chaplin’s cat, Humphrey Bogart’s dog, The Little Rascals‘ Petey. I didn’t see any of those, but I wasn’t really looking. It was just such an overall lovely place. I loved the brick mausoleum, built in the late 1920s when the cemetery first opened. I walked around for hours while Nat took a nap in the car (he had gotten a cold just as we were leaving Portland).