Them Bones

Lost Lands is a music and arts festival in Legend Valley Ohio, hosting 55,000 attendees, and boasting some of the biggest and most advanced art installations and stages in North America.

In summer of 2023 I was approached by Bass Coast Co-founder, and Guild Art director, Liz Thompson to bring some large scale sculptures to Lost Lands Festival in Legend Valley Ohio. I was tasked with acquiring and manufacturing tools for the sculpting of foam in a remote environment, to create forty, twelve foot tall bones with which to adorn the site’s many structures, as well as some large rocks to decorate some last minute stage additions.

I was fortunate to be able to bring along Tanner Hamilton, who at the time, was my sculpting coordinator and mentor on a yet-to-be-released Netflix period drama. While I designed the processes and templates to be used that first year I was grateful to have Tanner’s experience to lean on while managing my first large scale sculpture project.

I returned to Lost Lands in 2024 to deploy the bones in an epic new environment. The bones would now be adorning, and appearing to support, a massive circular Colosseum- style stage called the Crater. They would need to be fire-proof to accommodate the pyrotechnics which would be terminating near their tops. This year I oversaw the project, with the assistance of sculptor and scenic painter, Sequoia Fabumni. While designing and carving two other major projects, we were able to re-coat, and paint the bones to deploy them in what feels like their proper home; The Crater.