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Marais Des Cygnes, John Michael Orr

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the concept, process, installation, and specific pieces in my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Marais des Cygnes. The Marais des Cygnes is a river in southeast Kansas and western Missouri, near a Bleeding Kansas-era massacre site of the same name. The river is notorious for flash flooding, was named by French explorers and translates to Marsh of the Swans. The work is about a fictional wandering car thief and alcoholic named Vernon, the bad guy in my novel. Vernon is obsessed with the distant past, particularly the time before the Louisiana Purchase and the Louisiana of …