United States uses mixed media to explore the image of our geography and history as a country. I was inspired by the motif of the river in Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the ongoing theme of freedom that the river represents in light of the context of slavery and economic repression. (The underlying photo in the middle is from where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers meet, representing an important site on the road to freedom for escaped slaves. In the book, Huck and Jim tragically miss this juncture.) This along with the contrast between rural and urban environment motivated me to start looking at our contemporary geography from above, with Google Earth. Images of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, the port of Los Angeles, the Tijuana border, rural apple farms in Washington state and the Rio Grande in Texas, all find ways into my recreation of our national geography, a image based more on the layers of our historical self identification and economic context, than on allegiance to any one "map".