GARDEN OF THE GODS is a site-specific installation built on the collapsed roof of Building 92 of the Albert Kahn-designed Packard automobile plant in Detroit. After many years of gradual decay, the roof of Building 92 had crumbled, leaving a handful of cast-concrete columns standing like pedestals amongst the rubble. The fallen roof had become dotted with plants over the years, becoming a kind of organic rooftop garden, where I would occasionally eat lunch. The site reminded me of the Roman Forum or Ber- nini’s Piazza San Pietro, and I felt inspired to work site-specifically there. In the summer of 2009, I began gathering dozens of aged wooden-console televisions from the ground floor of an adjacent Packard building. I lugged them up four stories to the top floor, and by winter, I was pushing them twelve feet up a decaying old wooden ladder to the top of each column-pedestal. I decided these were the new Gods, watching over the city like Big Brother panopticon towers. I filled each TV with broken concrete to combat the rooftop winds, and classified each arrangement as one of the twelve gods of the classical Greek Pantheon, naming them based on surroundings and location. This new pantheonic Garden of the Gods was documented through the seasons as the site continued to decay, and as the TV towers were destroyed. The elements continued to pick apart Building 92, and after multiple four-story collapses, the structure was finally demolished in 2019.

GARDEN OF THE GODS, SOUTH, WINTER

GARDEN OF THE GODS RAINBOW