FLOATING CITADEL was commissioned by the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority Art Foundation and permanently installed in front of Huntington Place (formerly Cobo Hall) in downtown Detroit. The 11-foot-diameter bronze was fabricated by Bollinger Atelier and is based on digital models of original sculptures created in various forms and materials since 1999, when I took a rubber mold of an East Jordan Iron Works domed sewer grate that I borrowed from the front lawn of Ford’s Fairlane Estate. Floating Citadel is installed only feet away from the “Citadel of Detroit,” the original, defensive walled fortifications of the city. The sculpture is located just north of the original Detroit River shoreline, and just south of the former Savoyard Creek, an ancient waterway turned into the city’s first enclosed sewer, dubbed “The Grand Sewer,” which still flows under what is now Huntington Place. Inspired by my copper mining ancestors and Michigan’s copper and iron ore history, the verdigris patinaed spherical form is based on celestial bod- ies, globes, orbs, astrolabes, shells, cages, drains, filters, thresholds, mystic symbols, ancient artifacts, “float copper,” and human skeletons—specifically the idea of rib cages, which protect life, but also trap us on the earthly plane. Affectionately nicknamed the “Sewer Sphere” and the “Cobo Ball,” the work comments on the dualistic state of the Earth, while being both a global, terrestrial object, and yet an ascending, spiritual form.