Explore a Colorado ghost town and the Berlin Wall at the Janet Turner Print Museum’s first exhibit of the school year.

“Landscape as Metaphor — From Arcadia to Dystopia” looks at metaphorical understandings of the human-land relationship, said Catherine Sullivan, the museum’s exhibit curator.

“Landscape, as a theme, came about when artists were no longer bound to make art for solely religious or classical purposes,” Sullivan said. “Since landscape is globally common, it inherently carries the ability to be more than just a picture of a location.”

With the help of co-curator Ann Martin, a lecturer in the geography and planning department, Sullivan was able to refine the selection of prints that are displayed to those that harmonize to reinforce the theme.

Sullivan said it’s important to showcase landscapes as works of art because of the impact they have on our life, memory and experience.

“Landscape, with its referential metaphor, has the ability to be an intimate experience even in light of its shared understanding,” she said.

She noted that the exhibit features fine art prints from the print collection only.

“Many will probably respond favorably to Gordon Mortensen’s Arcadian reductive woodcuts ‘Walden’ and ‘Late January’ and be more troubled by the more dystrophic and threatening ‘Exploration Equatorial’ by Erik Desmazieres,” Sullivan said.

Austin Barden, a junior interior architecture major found the artwork engaging.

“The use of space and analogous colors create a peaceful yet powerful scene for the viewer,” he said. “I really like the use of atmospheric perspective, especially in ‘Japanese Landscape’ because it really gives the impression that you’re standing on a beach looking out at other islands in the distance.”

Chico State owns the Turner Print Collection, which consists of close to 4,000 original artisan prints that span six centuries and contains works by artists representing at least 40 countries.

Turner exhibitions are comprised of a selection of these prints, generally in a thematic exhibition, Sullivan said.

“As curator I enjoy exploring the collection for prints that support themes that are relevant to art today in the contemporary concerns of image making,” she said. “In a way the collection is a visual library and hopefully they assist the viewer in a visual literacy.”

“Landscape as Metaphor” will be on display through Sept. 21 at the print museum, which is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Additional prints are hung in the first Sullivan said floor cases in Ayres Hall to continue the exhibition in another site.

Nicole Santos can be reached at [email protected] or @Iam_NicoleS on Twitter.