Education:

 

  • Ph.D. Art History, University of London
  • M.Phil. History of Art, University College London
  • M.A. History of Art, University of New Mexico
  • B.F.A. University of Kansas

Before COA

Catherine taught at McGill University, University of New Mexico, University College London, Kent Institute of Art and Design, and New Mexico Highlands University. She is a Master Printmaker of Intaglio and Relief and Founder of Hexenspuk Press, New Mexico.

Scholarly and Creative Interests

Catherine is an artist, art historian, writer and devoted teacher. She embodies our ideals for the Allan Stone Chair as “an art historian with a studio practice, an established body of work, and a track record of teaching excellence.”

Catherine comes to us with a rich knowledge of Art from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, Romanticism and critical theory; print culture in the transnational fields of science and technology; and, Contemporary Art.  She is a painter and is a Master Printer of Intaglio. 

More Information about my Courses

 Expeditionary Courses:  The Hudson River School and New Mexico

 

Thomas Cole Studio visit - Hudson River School CourseThomas Cole Studio visit - Hudson River School Course

Emily with Louise Bourgeois at the DIA BeaconEmily with Louise Bourgeois at the DIA Beacon

Bandelier National Monument, New MexicoBandelier National Monument, New Mexico

Petroglyph National Park, Rio Grande Valley, New MexicoPetroglyph National Park, Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico

 

 

Art and Culture of the American Southwest

When we travel to New Mexico, we travel across and to the traditional homelands of Indigenous peoples.  The original peoples of New Mexico, the ancestral Puebloans, Pueblo, Diné, and Apache since time immemorial, have deep connections to the land.  We honor the land itself and those who remain stewards of this land throughout the generations. 

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, ‘Surviving Active Shooter Custer, 2018

 

Contemporary Artist as Researcher and Activist

Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War, 2019

Demons from the Depths

Beware

Across a range of epochs, cultures, and territories, human beings have proffered myths, stories, and scientific theories in order to explain catastrophic natural events. From kata=down, strephein=turn, the Greek katastrephein meant “under-turning” in the ancient world. This course explores postulations regarding large- and small-scale calamitous events that seem to originate from below the surface of Earth. Our enquiry engages with legendary tales, historical records, material culture and scientific discourses that document attempts to explain the meaning and/or mechanism of such memorable episodes. What causes a mountain to eject ash and toxic gases? What infernal force creates lava flow? Why does the earth shake? Why do some natural waters cause harm? How do we understand that which we cannot see? Through case-studies informed by the literature of science, the arts and humanities, we will plumb the depths and limits of the human imagination. This class uses both a lecture-based and seminar-style discussion approach as well as time spent visiting local lab and field sites. Students will be evaluated based on their weekly activities and writing assignments, and a final project with both oral and written presentation components.  Co-taught with Sarah Hall, Professor of Earth Science.Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean

 

 

 

 

Drawing Mineral and Botanical Matter in the Forest of Maine

 

Romanticism: The Triumph of the Imagination over Reason?

Caspar David Friedrich, Drifting Clouds

Frederic Edwin Church from The Icebergs, 1861

 

 

Studio Printmaking

Printmaking Studio

Photo Credit:  Susan Rodriguez

 

The Wilderness in Landscape Art I: Proto-Ecological Visions

George Inness, Lake Nemi (detail)

 

Processing the Unexpected Journey

 

 

Courses Listed in the Course Catalog

 

The Range of Sublimity in the Artist Mind

Full Moon Winter 2018

Edmund Burke’s chief contribution to aesthetics is his exegesis on the contrary states that define the Beautiful and the Sublime: these are the regular and irregular, binaries of pleasure and pain, appeal and terror, knowingness and not-knowing. Burke encourages the viewer of a ‘place’ to distance herself from the natural agencies that incite emotional response to landscapes. In keeping a distance; however, we risk participating in a lifeless, hegemonic practice that colonizes nature and hinders aesthetic engagement. Proximity to nature (rather than detachment from it) makes visible the consequences of eighteenth-century imperial and nineteenth-century nationalist missions masked in many of the works of the Hudson River School. Non-native forces in the Western Hemisphere took ownership of humans, places, resources, and in the process, devastated whole peoples and ecologies. Through travel, study, research and creative activity, students will learn to see and appraise the transformation of peripatetic practice into art; as well as witness how art can both reveal and conceal the nature of place. How have the varied notions of sublimity affected artist practice over the past 250 years? What are artists making now that counters a narrative that privileges detachment over intimacy and counters modernity’s embrace of indifference? This course will consider the concept of sublimity, both as subject and agent, in the work of visual artists during the aforementioned epochs and the present one.

 

The Reality Effect: Art and Truth in the 19th Century

There are myriad realities described by artists and authors. The Reality Effect course concerns itself specifically with the development of visual Realism from 1800-1945 in Europe and America. We will examine the origin of artist methodologies of production as they relate to modernity. Our concerns will include the relation of art to significant political, sociological, and psychological programs of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The new realities created through revolutions in political and social structures, and in our understanding of the physical composition of the world itself are made evident in art that pictures social class, large historical moments, and a specific instant of time in a way that changes how we visualize reality and challenges our understanding of actuality. Students will be evaluated based on class participation, class discussion leadership, reading notes, and written paper.

Level: Introductory/Intermediate. Pre-requisites: none. Class limit: 16. Lab Fee: $30. Meets the following degree requirements: AD, HY

 

Art Since 1900: Harmony and Conflict

Art Since 1900

El Anatsui, AG+BA, 2014

The artworks of Pablo Picasso and Hannah Höch; both the well-known and lesser-known artist made paintings and sculptures that facilitate our understanding of how people experienced the twentieth century. Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Arte Povera, Social Realism, among others — these artist movements were initiated through group declarations of common aesthetic purpose. Variance within artist conventions and procedures accelerated during moments of unrest and social progression thus providing a range of counter-narratives to canonical histories of the period. The last quarter of the twentieth century was one in which new discourses informed creative production and art mono-cultures gave way to intersectional experience. Theories advanced by Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, and Judith Butler offered new networks with which to understand how art operates as both a reflection and critique of culture.  This art history survey looks at how their varied concerns with theories of the unconscious, radical political programs, social upheaval, gender politics, and scientific advances; and, how diverse receptions of human experience were expressed through artistic production.  Anxiety, joy, curiosity, and activist predilection combine to formulate a rich amalgam of fresh and challenging visions of the world.  

Level: Introductory. Prerequisites: none. Lab fee: $65. Meets the following degree requirements: AD HY

 

Prints & Printmakers: A Natural and Cultural History

 

Prints and Printmakers introduces students to the history and culture of printed images.  The course is organized chronologically and develops by way of geographic location.  The advent of reproductive technology in the fifteenth century (printed books, woodcuts, and engravings) coincides with dramatic developments in the natural sciences, theology, and political institutions of the Western world - the images from this early modern era still hold an emblematic place in our imagination and remain concealed within current popular culture.  The class will be concerned with unique images, multiples, and reproductions from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century that serve as substitutes for objects of art, topographical describers, as well as pictures that serve as paradigms of cultural ideas and illustrations for scientific discourse.  We will explore the way in which nature and culture are envisioned before the popularization of photography and digital image revolution.  Theoretical associations with these reproductive technologies will be brought forward to deepen our understanding of artistic practice.  Anyone studying the development of human ideas over time would benefit from this course.  Students will be evaluated based on class discussion, short writing assignments, and a final research paper.  

Level:  Introductory/Intermediate.  Prerequisites none.  Lab fee: $65  Meets the following degree requirements: AD HY

Community Engagement and Advocacy

Throughout her career as an artist and scholar, Catherine has demonstrated a commitment to developing, piloting, and participating in efforts to bring a wider range of human ecological awareness and action in the communities where she has taught. 

During time as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, Catherine joined in the Sanctuary Movement, working to stem the restrictive immigration policies that targeted Central American asylum seekers.  She participated in various actions of civil disobedience including ones to protest the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) to store transuranic radioactive waste at Carlsbad, New Mexico. 

Before leaving New Mexico to teach and study abroad, Catherine served for 12 years in the El Pueblo Fire Department.  Trained as an arson investigator and wildland firefighter, she worked in small villages, on public lands, and led an annual Head Start workshop for children to give them the tools needed to educate their own families about fire prevention and safety.

Catherine co-founded Los Amigos del Rio, a public advocacy group formed to protect the Upper Pecos River Valley from a proposed uranium and thorium processing facility on its banks.  She served as Board President of the Theater Residency Project founded by Cookie Jordan in Santa Fe and co-produced Left-Handed, a play performed in secondary schools to educate faculty and students about the variability of sexual orientation and gender identity in youth populations.  

Since arriving on Mount Desert Island in 2010, she has chosen to document its biotic diversity through her art.  The range of experiences in political, social, cultural, and natural worlds honed her eye and her heart as an artist, scholar, and activist. 

Publications

A recipient of various grants and fellowships, Catherine is currently working on a book related to German Romanticism and Mining Practices.

Selected Publications:

‘Speleological Interiority – The Mindfulness of a Spelunking Anatomist,’ in Discovering the Human Life Science and the Arts in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, Ralf Haekel, Sabine Blackmore (Hg.), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, 2013).

‘Painted Nature -19th century landscape,’ Encyclopedia of World History, The Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914, Ed. James Overfield, (Oxford and Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO), 2012.

I know the Voices Dying with a Dying Fall, Exhibition Catalogue Essay for artist Robin Ward, Published by Omphalos Press, San Francisco, 2011.

‘Theory of the Ridiculous: Max Beckmann, Jean Paul, and Dostoevsky’s Donkey,’ Art History, Vol. 33, Issue 3, 2010.

‘Emanation and Return: Archive as Liberator,’ Afterimage: a journal of media arts and cultural criticism, vol. 35, no. 3, (November, 2008).

‘Notes on an Indulgence,’ Vertigo Magazine, volume 3, no. 6 (Summer 2007).

‘Retrieval and Transmittal in a Fictive Photographic Experience,’ in Johnson and the 33 Confessors, Los Angeles and London, 2007.