A Whimsical And Colorful Houston Halloween Graveyard

Sculptor James Sterling Pitt did not know what color a world without AI would want its tombstone to be. Luckily, you can ask AI that. Unluckily, well … here’s how that went. 

“I turned on the computer and asked Chat GPT ‘Tell me what color you are,’” he said in an interview. “It goes, ‘I am the absence of.’ And I said, what color is that?’ It said, ‘Black.’ So, his tombstone’s black.” 

Pitt and I were sitting on the sun-kissed back porch of Houston art activist Pat O’Connell’s house on Robinhood in West University. It was a gorgeous October day, which went a long way toward mitigating how much Pitt’s conversation with AI sounded like someone talking to the antagonist of “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” Mostly, though, the graveyard installation is a fun exploration of the deaths of 2026.

O’Connell started his graveyard installation series in 2018. For years, it was simple white crosses with the names of celebrities or concepts (hence “a world without AI”) that had died throughout the year. It served as a neat contrast to the usual cemetery set-ups seen in yards across the Halloween season. 

That changed this year after O’Connell met Pitt at the Art League Houston Gala. Pitt moved to Houston in 2024 after building a name in the San Francisco art scene. Though he had a vibrant community and respect from other artists around him, the high cost of living and competition burned him out. A blossoming romance and the lure of cheap studio space brought him to Texas, where he’s fallen in love with everything but the humidity.

O’Connell told Pitt about his graveyard, and Pitt was inspired to take it to the next level. Instead of simple crosses, he would use foam sculpting material to create impressive, brightly colored representations of the people’s lives. Pitt drew inspiration from the grave of Charles-Édouard “Le Corbusier” Jeanneret and his wife Yvonne. The architect designed his own headstone, a colorful concrete marker overlooking the Mediterranean that celebrated his life’s work. 

“It’s very colorful and playful with these big tropical plants,” said Pitt. “It got me thinking, why can’t it be more celebratory?”

“Our cemetery really is more lighthearted,” added O’Connell. “At least, we’re trying to be.” 

The best example of the philosophy is the sculpture for Dolly Parton. Even in a year full of beloved celebrity deaths, Parton stands out. Her long career as a country singer, actress, queer icon, and theme park owner touched so many lives that memorializing her in blank stone seems wrong. Pitt put her name in hot screaming pink, with the top of the tombstone ribbed in frills. 

It’s a wide spectrum of people in the yard. Dilbert creator Scott Adams is represented by a white stone that vaguely resembles his most famous creation’s head. More upbeat is the grave of longtime Houston news anchor Dave Ward, who shepherded the city through storms and other crises for more than half a century. A bright blue tombstone that looks a little like a broadcast tower honors him.

The stones have a wonderful mix of vaguely human elements and simple shapes. It’s part of the way Pitt sees the world after he was literally killed in a car crash in 2008. Pitt was revived, obviously, but the experience left him with brain trauma that fundamentally changed the way he sees the world.

“A lot of my sculptures and artwork, I think about anthropomorphism a lot and abstraction and how my actual vision changed after a near-death experience,” he said. “And if [O’Connell] gave me the names more ahead of time, I think they’d be even crazier.”

Dealing with death is hard. Despite its inevitability, there is always a fear about dying and the unease of living in a world without certain people or things. Good or bad, when people leave reality there is a hole.

Traditionally, Halloween is supposed to be a time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thin. O’Connell’s yard project is a reminder to both honor what’s gone and maybe not take it too seriously. Eschewing the horror of most Halloween yards and the somber aspect of actual cemeteries re-contextualizes death in a new way. Not everyone appreciates it, but it’s worth having a new perspective.

“My favorite tombstone of all time was Diddy White Parties,” said O’Connell, referring to the gatherings by Sean “Diddy” Combs that were the subject of major criminal investigations in 2025. “I could have put something about losing his freedom, but I wanted to put a little levity in it.”