BONE BLACK is a site-specific installation and photography project created over the course of 5 weeks in the Spring of 2019. Based on an 1890’s photograph of a massive pile of bison-bones at the Michigan Carbon Works plant in Detroit, and the “bone black” pigment created from their process of burning animal bones, practiced for approximately 150 years, the installation was commissioned by Cranbrook Art Museum, for the exhibition “Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, & Materiality,” curated by Laura Mott. The work was designed site-specifically within the vacant Assembly Bay building of the former Northern Crane industrial sites, along an old railroad street called Guoin, one block from the Detroit River, in the historic Warehouse District. Focusing on the metaphorical “bones” of Detroit, approximately 35 abandoned boats – Shipwrecks - and related debris, illegally dumped and neglected throughout the City, were collected via trailer-towing pick-ups and various winches, and hauled to the Northern Crane site as materials for the work. 33 of these Shipwrecks were suspended and stacked within the Assembly Bay, creating a ghost fleet or funerary procession through time, flowing westward parallel to the Detroit River. 22 of the boats were washed with the Bone Black pigment, allowing each Shipwreck’s colors, graffiti, and history to bleed through. Multiple boats had trees growing within them, which were preserved during install, with the tree-boats situated under the collapsed sections of roof, so they could soak up all of the rain. Playing with ideas of archeology, anthropology, ceremony, and mysticism, the installation was designed to transform the cavernous factory setting into a future-archaic scene from some alternate history, perhaps conveying an underwater view, looking up from the stillness of a seafloor. Photographed and documented over time, the suspended Ships were lowered in stages, hanging nose-down, and finally stacked into a central burial mound – a Shipwreck version of the Carbon Works bison-bone mountain. Exhibited from June through October of 2019, the entire installation was dismantled and destroyed by Autumn, with all 33 fiberglass wrecks being crushed into dumpsters, as they have no scrap-value and cannot be recycled - which is why they are so commonly dumped in Detroit.

Bone Black and the exhibition Landlord Colors were featured in Forbes, Hyperallergic ,PBS Newshour,WDET's Culture Shift, the Detroit Free Press and Artnet News