Wanabeze is the indigenous Anishinaabe name for Belle Isle, the Central Park of Detroit. My decade in the city included plenty of visits to the island, from summer picnics and paddling the canals to Biking the Blizzard and escaping winter in the warmth of the conservatory. For years, on any visit I’d be consistently disoriented by the tangle of curving one-way roads. My current project recreates the island as an actual labyrinth and fiendish riddle for viewers to solve. In 25 pen & ink drawings I try to capture some of Belle Isle’s natural beauty and historic buildings, along with the persistent spooky air of abandonment.

[working title: Noah’s Ark] Sometime around 2018 I became interested in creating a list of all the “iconic” animals–those who pop up over and over from the Western and Chinese zodiacs to folk tales, fables, religious texts, idioms, and just-so stories. Zodiac the game (which comes from the Greek for “circle of animals”) organizes 42 animals into 7 environments or zones. Each has a card with special abilities related to their nature. Players move around the board, play and collect cards, and try to build a set of animals in one environment to win.