Connections to Place

Marks on Place: American Landscapes, paintings and drawings by Catherine Jennings, explores how landscapes bear marks of human presence. Jennings, part-time lecturer in the art and art history department, works primarily in watercolor, but the piece featured at right is a stunning presentation in graphite. The exhibit includes scenes from West Texas, New Mexico, San Francisco, and Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California. Jennings captures the infamous southwestern light and colors in her paintings of the Abiquiu area in New Mexico—the land so favored by Georgia O’Keefe. Terlingua Evening elegantly illustrates what the artist calls “the sublime and harshly beautiful” land of Big Bend National Park in Texas. Tule Lake Wildlife Refuge, burning agricultural fields, Tule Lake is a small treasure of blue, billowing smoke clouds. This exhibit will be on display in the Humanities Center through May 30. Jennings received her M.F.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. at Texas Tech University. More than a decade of her paintings and drawings can be viewed on her Web site: www.csuchico.edu/~cjenning.

Lisa Kirk