NIKE OF THE STRAIT is a site-specific sculpture commissioned by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and installed along the Detroit Riverwalk at Robert C. Valade Park. Created using scrap metal buoys and channel markers from the US Coast Guard, the sculpture was built throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Conceptually, the form references the Nike of Samothrace, the winged goddess of Victory, winged figures that historically adorned ships, wooden-ribbed boat hulls, the history of Nike and Ajax missiles located along the Detroit River and Belle Isle, a former Vito Acconci concrete-boat playscape once located nearby, and the many layers of history at this site along the River. In the past, this location has been used as a USCG buoy storage yard, as John Dodge’s estate and boathouse, as a lumber and grindstone dock, and as a native river shoreline that stayed virtually unchanged for thousands of years. The sculpture is also a de-facto monument for the many birds that like to rest on this old concrete pier, hunting and swimming in the former boat slips on either side. The four buoy cones point to the four cardinal directions and the sculpture stands approximately eighteen feet tall.