These fourteen contemporary visual artists shared a sense of place within a culture turned in upon itself; they were specifically chosen because their work embodied the palpable vestige, the salvaged memory, the ritual, fabric and texture of New Orleans, a pronounced locality within the greater Southern setting. Some of the artists were motivated by the mystery and beauty of decay with its correlative opposite, a magnetic attraction to the garish. Others preserved memories and participated in the revival of lost monuments as part of the "black and white" drama of the South as colored by the Catholic sensuousity of Louisiana.