The dense layers of New Orleans' ongoing milieu create a world in which the senses are easily overwhelmed: sound and color and words collide with and blend into one another; emotions are hard to discern, because one is at pains to conceal one's deepest responses and present a carefree face. Assemblages of words and objects and materials are hammered out that convey the sense of the New Orleans within-- the dynamic processing of experience that is the constant activity of the self-- comprised of memory, people, objects, streets, houses, sounds, smells. New Orleans' inhabitants are among the most self-assured people in the New World, largely because they assimilate without question a culture whose whole fabric (both strengths and flaws) appears as "givens". It is not always clear what is being built up and what is breaking down-- which resembles the floating, isolated moment that New Orleans seems perpetually to exist in spiritually, while the real-world process of birth and decay goes on busily nonetheless.

By poet Carolyn Maisel, from "Contemporary Memorials" catalogue