Page 23 - CollegiateInvitationalCatalog2021

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