All On A Mardi Gras Day

New Orleans, LA

2016-2018

“I see a recurring ritual devoted to spontaneity, a festival in which collective display is impossible without individual creativity, a form in which innovation is grounded in tradition.  In short, a model for community where individual expression is the basis for social harmony and where continuity is the basis for creativity.  And, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, I trust I will find…the creativity and good humor that will allow the best to endure, even if it must endure side by side with old troubles that should be long and gone and human failings that will last till Gabriel’s horn.”

-Reid Mitchell, from “All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival”