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Obadiah Bue :

uid Sculptures in a F mer Qua y

By Kate O’Hall ran

Phot s courtesy of Stone Designs/Obadiah Buell

The road to the Granite Garden Gallery winds through pine woods from the town of Sullivan. As you turn off Whales Back Road
at the entrance you are welcomed by a remarkable array of stone sculptures, from the monumental to the whimsical. They are all the
work of Obadiah Buell, owner of Stone Designs and the Granite Garden Gallery, an outdoor sculpture garden.
The property was once a granite quarry. In the 1800s, quarrying granite was an important industry in Maine, with more than 150
quarries employing thousands of workers. Six of those quarries were located in or around Sullivan. During the 20th Century, as rein-
forced concrete and steel replaced granite as a building material, the quarries were abandoned.

Obadiah Buell was born on the edge of one of these abandoned granite quarries, just down the road from his current home. His father,
Dave, was a poet and musician, and mother Liz was a calligrapher and illustrator. Inspired by the ideas of the back-to-the-land move-
ment, they came to Sullivan in the 1960s in search of a self-sufficient rural life. They bought an abandoned quarry, built a cabin from
salvaged materials, and home-schooled their three children. The children worked alongside their parents to make a living from the
land: growing Christmas trees, raising trout, making fireworks, producing fireworks shows, and working with the granite remnants on
the property.

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