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Liz Ward


                                         Professor
                                         Trinity University




                                         The “Ghosts of the Old Mississippi” series is based on
                                         geological maps of the ancient courses of the Lower
                                         Mississippi River, and was inspired by memories of
                                         my childhood in South Louisiana. Rivers are the great
                                         metaphors for time, and the maps of the Mississippi’s
                                         ancient courses suggested memory to me, both the River’s
                                         memory and my own.

                                         The project evolved into an exploration of my ancestral
                                         roots in New Orleans, where my great-grandfather was a
                                         steamboat captain on the Mississippi.

                                         I eventually allowed personal memories and artifacts, such
                                         as my mother’s recipe cards and the toile patterns of my                                                                                                                                               Left
                                         New Orleans grandmother’s and great aunt’s furnishings,                                                                                                                                                Ghosts of the Old Mississippi: St. Francisville; Mixed-media
                                         to enter into the work, overlaying the time-frame of human                                                                                                                                             on paper, 2019
                                         generations onto the vast temporal distances of geology.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Above
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Ghosts of the Old Mississippi: Floating Life; Mixed-media on
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                paper, 2019
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