For decades, Richard M. Richardson built a special kind of sanctuary in Goshen, Mass. After his death earlier this month, friends and family gave him a special sendoff – honoring the man behind one of the Northeast’s most unique and spiritual roadside attractions.
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“So, at this point, Richard M. Richardson – we release your spirit to return to your celestial home that we all know, in our hearts, is us,” said Brian McCue Saturday.
Clad in a bright purple robe, McCue bellowed a short sermon for the recently-departed Richardson – a fellow western Mass. artisan who was 77 when he died Oct. 6, surrounded by family.
Three weeks later, friends and family gathered again at the very sanctuary Richardson spent the last 30 years building: the Three Sisters Sanctuary in Goshen off of Route 112 - a plot of land its proprietor referred to as an “8-acre canvas.”
On Saturday, it was home to songs and celebration.
With the Eventide Hospice Choir singing, the remembrance featured those who knew Richardson best, with many recounting how the sanctuary came together – a hodgepodge of statues and stones that ooze Zen and peace.
It includes the glass-studded, mosaic dragon head overlooking several gardens and stone circles Richardson and company had been building since the mid-90s.
It’s through said dragon head that Dan Manson came to know the artist decades ago.
“I was just out there in the parking lot with a good buddy of mine - we're out looking at this dragon head on the back of this pickup truck, drooling all over it, going ‘What the hell is this?’ and this hippie dude comes walking out, and he's like ‘Yeah, I'm gonna be building this double-sided fireplace with stone in Goshen!’ and ‘You should come on up here and check it out!’” Manson recounted. “… and I did, and I've been here ever since.”
Manson would assist with several installations at the sanctuary over the years. He’s also known locally as “The Pumpkin Man” for his pumpkin carving and lighting parties, including one previously held in the very stone circle where Saturday’s remembrance took place.
The double-sided fireplace Richardson assembled, dubbed “The Dragon’s Den,” features prominently in the sanctuary, adorned not just with glass and the dragon head, but a small ocean of photos and tchotchkes memorializing all manner of individuals.
It marks the center of what feels like a small maze, filled to the brim with boulders Richardson collected and set in place over the years, leaving next to no stone unturned as newcomers Sam Weiner and Abi Cohen of New Jersey saw.
“We were talking to somebody earlier who mentioned that he knew Richard many years ago, when he bought a little land and a lot of the work is just getting rocks out of the soil and putting them somewhere - he really created a space and it's really amazing to see that, all the work that he put in,” Weiner remarked.
“The space is very, very intentional and at the same time - organic. [Richardson used] a lot of rocks, branches… metal - it does seem very taken care of as well as cohesive with the surroundings,” Cohen added as the two departed the remembrance.
Both said they had just heard about the sanctuary while heading through western Mass. that weekend and said they were moved not just by the art, but the man himself, who once made it a point of coming out and speaking with guests about what was before them.
That would include walls of glass mosaics, metal and stone statutes, with messages of peace and love filling every gap, including a section Richardson was said to be working on in his final years while dealing with a cancer diagnosis.
Originally from New Jersey himself, Richardson purchased the property in 1976. As he recounted for the Massachusetts Cultural Council website, the “environmental artist” called it destiny, and that he “instantly knew” it was where he would lay down his roots.
Ricki Carroll, founder of the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, recalled Richardson as a man who woke up almost every morning with a desire to discuss what he hoped to get done – including a now-technically unfinished series of circles representing the cycles of life.
“The suggestion would be done in five minutes, sometimes it was 10 years, and I knew it would just always happen,” Carroll told WAMC, recalling some of their phone calls. “In the mornings, he would just talk about what he was planning to do for the day. ‘What's my new work in the sanctuary?’”
“‘My latest inspiration…’” McCue chimed in.
“’I’m working on Father Time!’” Carroll continued, re-enacting a call. “‘Richard, when is that going to be done?’ ‘I don't know! A year later? Two years later?’”
“I don't think he really wanted Father Time to appear until he was ready to go,” Carroll continued. “He was always [saying] ‘I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet.’ And then… Father Time appeared, and he knew.”
Hovering above one of the stone circles, clutching a staff and makeshift hourglass, the Father Time statute bears some resemblance to Richardson – facial hair included.
As his daughter Sara Winona Richardson LaBonte said, the whole premise of the sanctuary started with a series of indoor gardens her father put together with his brother, Chuck.
Richardson would lose Chuck to melanoma in 1993 and, amid grief and passion, more gardens would take shape outdoors.
Art would be collected, including the sanctuary’s iconic tin man statute out front – but the patch’s namesake, Three Sisters Sanctuary, would arrive in 2004, shortly after the death of one of his eldest daughter, Tina Marie Richardson.
The tin man would get a heart after that, Sara says, and things only grew more from there – on top of the long-running stovetop/oven restoration work he did for the “Good Time Stove Company.”
“Richard loved a passion project - be it antique stoves that lit the initial fire in the belly or pursuing environmental art or self-reflection or whatever those things that led to a richer, deeper life – [those] were the things that he wanted to prioritize,” she said.
Giving WAMC a tour Sunday, Sara showed off about two dozen massive, cast-iron stoves.
She said she carries the title of “Stove Princess” – after being a part of the operation since childhood.
“His first passions were family, followed by antique stoves - he and my mother set a course that charted 50 years in an antique stove industry that remains as relevant today as when they started it, in the 70s during the oil embargo,” she said. “He was so invigorated by this space that it just drove him every single day to labor in love, to have an artful life of purpose that he loved, and invited other people to experience the same, wherever they were at - if that meant making a small garden in their house, a rock garden outside or traveling the world of experience.”
In many ways, Richardson embodied both the creative and cultural spirit of the Hilltowns in his slice of western Mass., says James Sullivan, known for hosting the Pioneer Valley Life show aired by Easthampton Media.
Sullivan interviewed Richardson multiple times for his show, and had even intended to visit the artist before moving out of state.
“The fact that he [built the sanctuary] on his own - not to say he didn't have help - but he created everything out of his head, out of his mind - he created everything that's there. It's a living place, even though it's rocks,” Sullivan said. “Rocks are still alive in my mind - the place is alive, and hopefully, people will come now and they'll learn about Richard. He won't be there to talk to them as they're walking around, which he most likely would have done a lot of times, but … hopefully, [the sanctuary] continues to be there.”
Back in 2024, while talking with Sullivan, Richardson reflected on what was already in the sanctuary and what was hopefully to come.
Speaking of the dragon’s den, he described a sense of success as the installation turned into a memorial for many.
“What is also so interesting is, when you go over there and you pick up those prayer cards, you'll find that people have passed in 2016, 2021, 2011… which tells me that, as an artist who is creating something that I believe is designed around grief, spirituality and a place for you to let go of a little bit of any baggage that you were carrying - whatever that might be - when that was finished and that started happening, and I looked at the ages of the cards and everything, I realized that somehow, I had really succeeded,” Richardson said. “I had succeeded in creating something spiritual that people would say, ‘I'm ready to let go.’”
As Sara tells WAMC, the sanctuary as well as the stove business remains open for the foreseeable future – open to drivers on Route 112 who happen upon it, as has been the case for years.
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Some audio for this story was provided by Easthampton Media and James Sullivan.
A shortened version of this story originally aired on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026.
