Each year, our regional artists have the opportunity to showcase their work in the premier juried art exhibit in the Quad Cities area: the annual Rock Island Fine Arts Exhibition in the Centennial Hall gallery at Augustana College. Area artists know that this is an important show not only for the regional recognition and the respect of fellow artists, but also for their résumés and possible sales.

Sixty works to represent any artist's life would usually be a major retrospective, but for the late Father Edward M. Catich, it's only a glimpse. Catich (1906-1979) was an artist, a scholar, a bookmaker and printer, a master calligrapher, a stone carver, a sign painter, a creator of fonts, a great teacher, a stained-glass window maker, a musician on many instruments, a coin collector, a painter, a traveler, an orphan, a child of the Depression, and a parish priest.

The latest show by Corrine Smith, running through March 9 at the Morrissey Gallery inside St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center, is a chance to see some exciting new color explorations by a painting and collage powerhouse. She has incorporated a wider range of bolder colors that have invigorated her powerful images with even more visual octane.

It took more than six months to clear out the potted plants and detritus from stray cats that choked their future gallery space. That was just the first in a long string of challenges that confronted husband and wife Ron and Sarah Jane Fellin as they infused the Peanut Gallery with life.

After almost eight and a half years, numerous art shows and happenings, and $20,000 of their own money to keep it running, a fire in an adjacent building that was being demolished forced the Peanut Gallery to end its run this past fall.