Roy Kanwit’s Stone Home & Sculpture Park in Spencertown (2024)

Roy Kanwit sculpted a home—and a life—according to his passions. Even though he died last fall, those passions still vibrate throughout the three-story stone house he handbuilt for his family from the Columbia County landscape. "Roy built the house so we could live the life and lifestyle that we wished to live," says his widow, Mary DeBey. Like a tiny castle from an ancient story, the house Kanwit built is an intricate patchwork of carefully placed stones, carved balconies, and even a turret, all overlooking his myth-inspired sculpture garden. Creating the home, the garden, and the life, "was no small feat," explains DeBey.

Kanwit's handprints are everywhere. The tools, chisels and blocks he used to carve his massive stone sculptures sit along his first-floor workbench, as if he set them down the day before. Inside the family home, a first-floor bedroom and former study is overflowing with his books on mythology and travel. The third-floor bedroom he once shared with his wife has a full view of his 17 acre sculpture garden—40 years in the making—along with the grove of trees he and DeBey planted. "The inside of the house reflects the outside," says DeBey. "The house and the sculptures are related to the beauty of the land."

Ancient History

Kanwit's passion for mythology emerged early while he was growing up in Washington, DC. "When he was in fifth grade, teachers would have him lecture the seventh and eighth grade because he could make ancient history interesting," says DeBey. "He just had an extraordinary knowledge about it. "That love of Greek mythology was a core part of his identity and creative expression."

His interest in sculpture, however, didn't emerge until his early adulthood. "During the Vietnam War he was drafted. He wasn't against saving people and would have fought in World War II, but he was against the Vietnam War," says DeBey. "He just couldn't do it. So he went to jail." He fled across country to San Francisco, where he was eventually arrested. "In jail, he preferred solitary confinement because it was safer," says DeBey. That's when, to entertain himself, Kanwit sharpened the edge of a toothbrush on the cell wall and began carving his bar of Ivory soap. "That's really where it all began," says DeBey. "He realized the only thing he wanted to do in life was sculpt."

Heart of Corn

Kanwit eventually made his way back to Vermont, where he worked a series of odd jobs delivering newspapers and cleaning factories at night. They allowed him time to focus on his sculpture during the day. "He always sculpted what was in his heart," says DeBey. "There was a price for doing that, but he was willing to pay it by working night hours and living frugally." What was in his heart were the Greek and Roman stories and histories he loved as a child, as well as his own personal mythology. One of his earliest marble carvings was inspired by a dream he had as a child. "It was a dream he had when he was 12, with girls passing his heart around," says DeBey. "When it came back to him his heart was an ear of corn."

That early sculpture proved prophetic: Kanwit soon met DeBey, an early childhood education specialist who hailed from Iowa corn country. "I found it on my door one day after we first began dating," says DeBey. "After I told him my father was a corn farmer." The two realized they were made for each other and began to plan their life together. "He wanted to have a sculpture garden and I wanted to get my doctorate," she says. They had their daughter, Ariana Kanwit, and began considering ways they could build a house, searching for the right piece of land to manifest Kanwit's vision. (That statue now sits under a tree in front of their house.)

Stone by Stone

They came across their sunny hillside in Spencertown one Thanksgiving while driving down the Taconic towards New York City. "There was nothing on it at the time," says DeBey. "There weren't any structures and not even a tree. You could drive right up it from the parkway. We thought what about this? We liked Columbia County and it seemed like the right place to begin building." So they bought the 17 acre property in 1983 and, even though Kanwit hadn't really built anything before, he began designing their home.

The original idea was to create a small two-story guest house," says DeBey. With the help of his close friend Kevin Todd, who was a Vermont builder, Kanwit built the original two-story wooden structure with a kitchen on the first floor and a living room and bedroom above. That was the first year.

In year two, Kanwit began to add the structure's stone walls by hand, using local stone from the property or nearby farms. "He collected rocks from the stone row walls farmers built years before," says DeBey. "Or he'd go help them excavate rocks from their fields. Then he lifted every rock himself and mixed cement in a wheelbarrow." That included the rocks for the eventual third story primary bedroom he added by carrying them one by one up a ladder.

As the years went on and the family evolved Kanwit continued to add to the structure, expanding the first floor to include a larger living room and octagonal dining area. When DeBey was writing her dissertation, Kanwit built her an office space at the back of the house, which they eventually modified into a bedroom with exterior access to accommodate visiting family.

At the same time Kanwit was fulfilling his dream of a sculpture garden—using the surrounding rolling hillside as a huge canvas to create large works. Built into the hillside, a basem*nt-level studio has a separate entrance under the home's front deck. Warmed with a wood stove in winter the studio has access to an adjacent patio in the summer months through large double doors. "He created the smaller sculptures inside, but the larger ones were all created out on the patio," says DeBey. "The opening of the doors in the spring was like Easter or some high holy day—that's when Roy pulled out the pieces he had worked on in the winter, finished them on the patio and then placed them around the garden with his flatbed truck. "

Often starting with a smaller model of what he wanted to create, Kanwit chiseled smaller works from slabs of green, white or black marble usually sourced from Vermont. The larger pieces—such as the giant hollow head he called Gaea—were cast in cement with steel reinforcement. "That one took him two summers to complete," says DeBey, of the statue that is visible from the Taconic Parkway. Over 40 years, Kanwit filled the garden with mythic characters that emerged from his imagination. The face of Dionysus, female figures seated regally or transforming into creatures, carved suns and spirals, an eye, and even Pi dot the garden canvas he created.

In a 2021 Rural Intelligence interview, Kanwit described his inspiration. "I have always been drawn to the connection between earth and sky," he explained. "I like working with stone because it's part of the Earth and this is how people have been making sculptures about the topics since the beginning."

While his sculpture garden has been temporarily closed since his death in October of 2023, DeBey and her daughter Ariana Kanwit plan to open it to the public again soon, as well as put into place a plan for sharing Kanwit's art in perpetuity. "The one thing that is not negotiable for either of us is getting rid of this place," says DeBey. "This is home."