Christina Leigh Explores the Places That Shape Us in “The Places We Carry” at Georgia Southern University
Solo exhibition at Georgia Southern University brings together abstract cartography, landscape, memory, travel, and the evolving Savannah Cartography Series.
SAVANNAH, Ga. | 8/18/2026 | Contemporary artist Christina Leigh, the artist behind CLR Creations, will debut her newest solo exhibition, “The Places We Carry,” at Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus, Learning Commons on September 1 , 2026. The exhibition presents a collection of abstract cartography paintings exploring the relationship between place, memory, movement, culture, and identity, and will remain on view through November 1, 2026.
“The Places We Carry” begins with a simple idea: the places we experience become part of us. A destination can remain through the memory of a street, the colors of a landscape, a journey shared with someone we love, or the feeling of returning somewhere that once felt like home. Christina approaches maps as records of lived experience rather than purely navigational objects. Her paintings draw from geography while layering color, texture, architectural details, waterways, cultural references, and abstraction to consider what traditional maps leave behind.
“I have always been interested in what happens after we put the map away,” says Christina. “We leave a place, but pieces of it travel with us. The landscape, people, colors, memories, and experiences become part of our own story. These paintings are my way of mapping what remains.”
Proposed layout for “The Places We Carry” exhibiting September 1 - November 1, 2026 at Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus, Learning Commons
Mapping Experience Through Material
The exhibition brings together paintings inspired by places that have shaped Christina personally alongside locations explored through commissions, research, and the stories of others. Each work begins with geography and develops according to the character of the place being represented.
Materials become part of that storytelling. Some works incorporate fluid abstract pours that recall water, tides, erosion, and changing landscapes. Others build dense layers of streets, buildings, gardens, historical references, metallic details, glazing, impasto, and pattern. Rather than using one visual formula for every location, Christina allows the history and physical character of each place to guide the painting process. The result sits somewhere between map, landscape, abstraction, and visual archive.
From a distance, viewers may recognize the geography of a place. Up close, the map begins to dissolve into individual marks, textures, colors, and layers.
Savannah and the Stories Beneath the Map
A central component of “The Places We Carry” is Christina's developing Savannah Cartography Series, which explores Savannah and coastal Georgia through waterways, ecosystems, neighborhoods, landmarks, histories, and communities. The series considers Savannah as more than its recognizable architecture and historic squares. It looks toward the marshes, barrier islands, rivers, working communities, cultural histories, and natural systems that have shaped the region.
Works such as Ossabaw Island: of Oceans and Oaks explore the movement of tides, erosion, marsh, forest, and coastal ecology through fluid layers of color. Abstract pours exist beneath glazed geography, allowing the landscape to appear as though it is continually forming and shifting.
A painting inspired by Pin Point: Pearls and Perseverance looks toward the history and cultural legacy of Savannah's Gullah-Geechee community. Pearlescent paint references the luminous interior of an oyster shell, while gritty impasto recalls its rough exterior. The contrast becomes a material reflection on labor, cultural richness, memory, and the generations whose lives were connected to the surrounding waterways and seafood industry.
Sweet Savannah: A Candy Colored Loved Letter approaches the map from a more personal and nostalgic perspective. Inspired by Christina's first visit to River Street Sweets at sixteen years old, the painting transforms Savannah's geography into a candy-colored landscape of memories. Bright patterns and playful colors reference the shop's famous pralines, while the underlying map traces the streets, waterways, and familiar geography of the city. The work considers how our relationship with a place can begin with something as simple as a smell, a taste, or a moment of childhood wonder—and how those seemingly small experiences can become part of the way we carry a place with us.
Together, these works ask viewers to look beneath familiar geography. A map can show where a place exists. Art can begin to ask what happened there, who lived there, what the landscape remembers, and why that history continues to matter.
Supporting the Savannah Cartography Series
The exhibition also marks an important stage in the development of the Savannah Cartography Series, an ongoing body of work dedicated to interpreting Savannah and the surrounding Lowcountry through abstract cartography.
Christina is currently raising funds to support the completion of the series. Contributions help fund research, artist materials, production, documentation, and the creation of additional paintings exploring the natural and cultural landscapes of coastal Georgia. Visitors to “The Places We Carry” will have an opportunity to learn more about the project and support the continued development of the Savannah Cartography Series.
“Savannah has so many stories that exist beyond the places most often photographed,” Christina says. “I want this series to spend time with the waterways, islands, neighborhoods, cultural histories, and everyday landscapes that make this place what it is. Each painting becomes an opportunity to look beneath the layers.”
Previous Exhibitions
Christina's work has been presented through juried and international exhibitions focused on landscape, place, abstraction, and environmental themes.
Recent exhibitions include Women in Arts Network's “Landscape and Places,” Gallerium's “Extinction 2026,” and Exhibizone's “Abstract Zone 2026.”
“The Places We Carry” continues Christina's exploration of geography as a framework for understanding personal and collective experience.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition: The Places We Carry
Artist: Christina Leigh | CLR Creations
Opening Date: September 1, 2026
Closing Date: November 1, 2026
Hours: Monday - Friday, 8AM - 5PM
Admission: Free
Venue: Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus, Learning Commons
Address:11935 Abercorn Street, Savannah, GA 31419
About Christina Leigh
Christina Leigh is the artist behind CLR Creations, an independent art practice centered on abstract cartography and the relationship between travel, place, memory, and identity.
Her work reimagines maps as records of lived experience. Through layered painting, abstraction, geographic forms, texture, color, and research, Christina explores how landscapes and destinations become connected to personal and collective narratives. Her artistic language is informed by a lifelong relationship with travel and more than a decade of experience in hospitality and tourism. From the landscapes surrounding Grand Teton and Yellowstone to the waterways, neighborhoods, and cultural histories of coastal Georgia, her work invites viewers to consider not simply where they have been, but what those places have left behind.
About the Venue
The Learning Commons at Georgia Southern University's Armstrong Campus is a multidisciplinary learning environment supporting student learning, collaboration, technology, programming, and community engagement. It is located at 11935 Abercorn Street in Savannah, Georgia.
Press Contact
High-resolution artwork images, artist portraits, exhibition images, artist biography, CV, and interview requests are available for media use upon request.
