On November 4, 2024, Caroline Prewitt Jennings passed away at her home in Greenfield, MA, after a year-long illness.
Caroline was born on July 27, 1949, in Montgomery, WV, to Lucy Taylor Jennings and William Witt Jennings Jr., and grew up a few miles away in Falls View, a small town along the Kanawha River.
Caroline was a high school student at the Stuart Hall School in Staunton, VA, where she was a competitive swimmer and class president. She attended Vassar College and Memphis College of Art, and graduated magna cum laude from Smith College as an Ada Comstock Scholar in 1996.
In addition to Falls View and Greenfield, Caroline lived in Cambridge, Shutesbury, and Northampton, MA; Mingo and Elkins, WV; Memphis, TN; and New York City. She spent several sojourns in Paris and easily could have called England a second home. Caroline was fluent in French and quite proficient in Arabic. She worked with the Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan and volunteered in both Morocco and Scotland.
Caroline was an artist and writer whose creative instincts remained sharp and searching throughout a lifetime of prolific endeavor. Among her legacies, she leaves countless paintings, books, prints, and poems. Her paintings are part of private, corporate, and public collections, including the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History; the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences; and the Smithsonian Institution. Her writing earned her fellowships at the Moulin à Nef and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and won her the Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest in 2023. Caroline also worked as a grant writer and editor, holding positions at the American Academy in Rome and the Bridgeman Art Library, as well as Executive Directorship of the Brodsky Foundation.
Caroline is survived by her daughters Lucy (Christopher Schwab) and Eleanor Gillers; grandchildren, Sophie and Becca; stepdaughter Sarah (Stephen) Lukachko; and two brothers, Henry Reiling Hillenmeyer Jr. and Dudley Taylor Jennings. Her brother, William Witt Jennings III predeceased her in 2013.
A service will be held in NYC on March 8, 2025.