What is a Mississippi?

As part of artTalk during Allen’s residency with the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Allen asked participants, “What does home mean to you?” Carrying on this project in Jackson, she asked attendants of the Back Home Down South opening reception the same question. Each cluster of objects and words tells a personal story of home for our neighbors. Allen connects the stories with winding dirt roads made from clay dirt from a ridge at her home, passed down through her mother from her great-great-grandmother, Georgia Cotton, a Master’s Child. The piece honors her memory and the complex histories of the land while showing that people and their stories are what a Mississippi is.