I met Caroline while waiting in line for coffee at Cherry Espresso uptown in New Orleans, just a few days before the major parades kicked off during Mardi Gras 2017. I had been chatting with some of the awesome Cherry staff, Ryan and Nikki, about the Jazz Fest lineup release. This is when Caroline, covered in paint, jumped into the conversation. I knew in that moment she must have been working on something amazing, and when I asked her about it, her answer was not what I had expected. “I paint Mardi Gras floats,” she casually responded. I was beyond stoked since I had never met a Mardi Gras float painter before, and I had a million questions I wanted to ask her. But I tempered my excitement and proceeded to ask a few basic questions about where she was from and how long she had been doing this amazing work.