Ghost - Rod Lathim

“Ghost”

Vintage Civil War Era Fence posts, neon, welded metal base

65” T x 36”W x 12.5”D

Ghost emerges from a black steel base as a meditation on memory and return. Three hand-forged wrought-iron posts—recovered from the Kaw River in Lawrence, Kansas—stand upright once more. During the Civil War, these heavy objects traveled with soldiers as portable horse corral posts: their corkscrew ends driven into the earth, their hammered loops holding rope, forming brief enclosures for war horses in temporary camps scattered across a divided land.

Time has marked them deeply. Their surfaces carry rust, wear, and the quiet residue of labor, fear, and endurance. Within the center post, a strand of white neon traces the iron’s spiral and rings, like a lingering breath or spirit re-entering its original form. The light does not overpower the metal; it listens to it—revealing what remains embedded rather than forgotten.

Ghost reflects on how histories of division do not simply conclude, but echo forward. The Civil War feels uncomfortably close in its fractures, its rhetoric, its unraveling of shared ground. In the present moment of national unrest, these forms stand as gentle witnesses, asking us to notice the recurring patterns we inherit. The glow at the center suggests not accusation, but awareness—an invitation to reckon with what haunts us. Are we listening when our country’s ghosts rise – quietly, insistently -- into the light?