In 1960 Siah Armajani left his native Iran to study at Macalester College in St. Paul, where he majored in philosophy but dreamed of being an artist. Today he is a world-renowned sculptor and architect whose work articulates both his lifelong passion for art and ideas, and his engagement with American culture, politics, and geography. Mississippi Delta focuses on the environment and humanity's effect on the landscape of the Mississippi River, presenting it as a carrier of history and a force of nature. Armajani's imagery-an overturned car, a partially submerged house, a stranded bed floating on the surface of the flooded river-is drawn from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Rendered schematically in the exacting tradition of an architectural draftsman as well as of Persian painting, this large-scale work is at once an abstracted landscape and a poignant expression of everyday life decimated by climactic events.