clients understand that all of the bones she
uses have been acquired from animals that
died naturally, and that they are cleaned and
sanitized prior to being made into jewelry or
sculpture.
While a pair of earrings or a necklace
might take only a short period of time to
put together, the time it takes to defl esh
an animal properly, and to clean the bones
takes a lot longer. Some of her pieces take
as long as 15 to 25 hours to create, and she
charges accordingly.
“How do I charge for the bones ... the
bones are free!” she said. “But fi nding the
bones, cleaning the bones, arranging the
bones in some of the bigger sculptures, that
takes a lot of time.”
Since she started creating her pieces just
a few years ago, she has amassed a large
collection of friends and fans who help her
fi nd new bones.
“I do a lot of scavenging,” she said. “We
have contacts at farms, and they will call
when something passes away. I recently got
a text from someone in Gainesville who had
an armadillo for me. That’s a bit of a drive
for an armadillo, but it was touching that
they thought of me. I also work with python
hunters from the Everglades. When you’re
out and about in nature, you just fi nd these
things. When bones are nearby, it’s like I can
smell them.”
For most people, the long and drawn
out process of taking a deceased animal
down to the bare bones is probably the
most unsettling part of Michele’s art. There
are many ways to do it, but Michele uses a
process called
maceration. It’s
as simple as
putting the
animal in
a bucket
of water
with
Dawn
dish
soap and
hydrogen
peroxide,
then waiting
for nature to
A GASPARILLA MAGAZINE •
take it course. After that, it’s a question of
spending the time to painstakingly clean the
bones, then letting the sun kiss them until
they are bleached white.
It was actually her husband who became
interested in doing the larger, whole animals.
Phillip and Michele love to fi sh, and one
day he came across something that really
piqued his interest. He was casting a line at
Deer Prairie Creek Preserve when a coyote
fl oating in the water caught his eye. He
realized an alligator had plucked it from the
bank, probably while it was drinking. It was
Valentine’s Day and Michele was at work,
so the idea for a very interesting gift for his
wife led him to play tug-o-war with the gator.
Phillip won, and proudly brought his catch
to Michele at work. Much to the chagrin of
her co-workers, Michele took one look at the
bloated carcass in the back of her husband’s
truck and said, “It’s beautiful!”
Phillip took it home and spent hours
recreating the coyote’s skeleton. Its name is
Valentino, Michele said, and it is a piece she
is proud of.
Michele’s love of bones has led her to
making two trips to the Osteology Museum
of Orlando, where she knows the curator and
has spent a lot of time up close and personal
with the specimens there. Close study of
those skeletons has helped her in her work,
and she said with every complex piece she
does she learns something new.
“You have to develop your own thing,
there’s no right or wrong way to do things,”
she said. “While Phillip puts the larger
skeletons together in a very precise way, I like
to use the bits and pieces of bones I have