Born in Havre de Grace, Maryland at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, Mariel Gardner is from Louisville, Kentucky, another river city. A graduate of the J. Graham Brown School and the University of Louisville, Mariel is from the Algonquin Neighborhood of Louisville’s West End. A haphazard farmer, knitter, and photographer, Gardner is a member of the West Louisville Women’s Collaborative where she creates and sustains peaceful, artistic spaces. She does this in the West End of Louisville, alongside a group of multi-racial, multi-generational women from all parts of the city. She’s traveled Kentucky collecting stories of Black land dispossession and is especially interested in the study of her ancestral home of Christian County, Kentucky.