People dressed in white laid the handcrafted bones on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for a three-day One Million Bones installation event in 2013.Silver City, NM – As a result of the Edwina & Charles Milner Women in the Arts lecture given by One Million Bones founder Naomi Natale and project manager Susan McAllister at Western New Mexico University in late September, the One Million Bones project found a permanent home.

Moved by the lecture and inspired by the project, the partners in Bear Mountain Arts (John McNulty, Jeff Brown, Tom and Sharon Dukes, Diane Fisher, Linda Brewer and John Rohovec) approached Natale and McAllister about moving their exhibit to Silver City. They offered to host One Million Bones in a permanent installation on location at Bear Mountain Lodge.

During a tour of the acreage surrounding Bear Mountain Lodge, Natale and McAllister came upon a wide meadow, surrounded by trees and bisected by a seasonal creek. The women said the site immediately spoke to the vision they held for a permanent resting place for the bones.

"Our vision for this permanent installation was that these bones, if you were to come upon them unexpectedly in this kind of natural setting, would make you pause to consider why they are there and what they represent," Natale said. "Our hope is that people are able to see them in the context of ongoing mass atrocities and genocide in the world today and also as symbols of our shared humanity."

McAllister added, "A field of bones represents a stark reality that we believe will touch people deeply, and we hope this surrounding will help them find their connection to the people represented by the bones."

The property owners expressed similar sentiments.

The proposal for the permanent installation includes plans for ongoing education in the schools and bone making workshops via a partnership with Syzygy Tile. These additions will allow people to add their own handcrafted bones to the original installation.

WNMU Expressive Arts Department Chair Michael Metcalf said, "This project is the type of interdisciplinary project that will be integrated into WNMU’s evolving Applied Liberal Arts and Sciences curriculum."

One Million Bones is a large-scale social arts practice combining education, hands-on art making, and public installations to raise awareness of ongoing genocides and mass atrocities. Over four years, the One Million Bones team collected handcrafted bones for a three-day installation event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on June 8-10, 2013. The one million bones collected were crafted by students, educators, artists and activists from around the world, and were laid out as a hopeful symbol of our common humanity. Each bone represented a call to action, a story, and a voice.

Then, the bones came to Albuquerque and awaited the next phase of their journey, which will continue here in Silver City.

For information on One Million Bones, visit theartofrevolution.org or onemillionbones.net. For information on the local installation and accompanying projects, contact Faye McCalmont, Special Assistant to the President for Cultural Affairs at WNMU, at 538-6179 or faye.mccalmont@wnmu.edu.