Gravestones aren’t just for Halloween. A dreary January does just fine for turning thoughts to the dark side.

But Nate Luce invites you to reconsider what a gravestone means, or rather what it can conjure up. During the month of January his Graven Images will be featured at the Chilmark Library.

Although he did not grow up on the Vineyard, Mr. Luce’s family goes back 11 generations on the Island. The show is an exploration of this belonging and not belonging.

The show takes its title from a seminal study of early New England gravestone art but then gives it a decidedly new twist. The forms are imaginary memorials created out of papier-mâché.

That is the tangible part of the exhibit. For the intangible, Mr. Luce says: “It’s an attempt at the impossible task of reconnecting a broken chain... of hanging onto the details of a relationship that can be remembered, but also imagining those that have either been forgotten, or never existed in the first place.”

A closing reception will be held on Saturday, Jan. 26 from 3 to 4:30 p.m.