Standing as a testimony to the American dream is the beauty of New Orleans Garden District. Comprising the area bordered by St. Charles and Magazine Streets between Jackson and Louisiana Avenues, it is situated two miles from the Vieux Carre.
Happily, enough of these beautiful mansions have survived to imagine a world where great fortunes were won and lost.
During the period with economic wealth, they stand as monuments to American ingenuity.
They have come to symbolize high economic status, political and social identity and a gracious way of life.
Later, following my training as an artist, I heard the romantic notions that they were passed on from generation to generation and that they were the city residences of well-to-do antibellum planters.
Actual fact is that the homes were not the aristocrat's but belonged to the entrepreneur or the self-made man. The majority of the rich planters were guests not owners.
Most of my earlier schooling was done in New Orleans admiring the architecture of the old homes in this area. Following my later travels to other such suburbs in other great American cities, I have found none to compare.
It is a unique expression of a city representing European cultural influences, Italian, English, Swiss, and particularly French and Spanish.
Even Greek classicism influenced architectural styles.
Stylistically, these images are captured by photoetching on thin steel plates.
Prints are made on paper and embossed (watermarked) with lace collographs in complementary patters expressive of the scroll-like forms in the oaks and flowers in the surrounding landscape or evocative of the lace of that era.
These "watermarks" constitute my own personal method of expressing that these prints are my very own.
Their preservation, to this day, is a continual renaissance. The fact that man can create such unparalleled beauty in this world, preserved to our day with love, teaches us that man survives with hope.
