Ebony G. Patterson (Jamaican, b. 1981 Kingston, lives Kingston and works Lexington, KY) is the recipient of many prestigious fellowships, awards and grants, including the Aaron Matalon Award from the Jamaica Biennial (2014), William H. Johnson Prize finalist (2013), a Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica (2012), Small Axe Magazine and Andy Warhol Commissioned Grant (2012), and Rex Nettleford Fellowship in Cultural Studies (2011). Her work will be featured in the upcoming seasons of Empire, directed by Lee Daniels (20th Century Fox Television), and was recently featured at Prospect.3: Notes for Now, curated by Franklin Sirmans, New Orleans, Louisiana (2014), and the Jamaica Biennial 2014, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston. Current solo shows include Dead Treez at the Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI (through Sept 2015) traveling to the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY (November 2015 – April 2016). Current and upcoming group exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); 12th Havana Biennial: Between the Idea and the Experience, Havana, Cuba (May-June 2015); Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (June-Sept 2015); En Mas’: Carnival 21st Century Style, The Caribbean as Site Specific Performance, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Louisiana (2015), now embarking on a tour of the Caribbean that will begin at the National Art Gallery of the Cayman Islands (2016), and the National Gallery of the Bahamas (2016). Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Forbes Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Vogue Italia, The Huffington Post, Artnet, Blouin Artinfo, ARC Magazine, Chicago Magazine, The Jamaica Observer, The Miami Herald, and Art Voices Magazine, among others. Patterson is Associate Professor in Painting and Mixed Media at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and is currently on sabbatical and was awarded a faculty research grant for 2015.

ART

Ebony G. Patterson: Beneath the Glitz

By EBONY G. PATTERSON

“The bee is attracted to the flower because of its coloring, because of the beauty, and it isn’t until he gets in that he discovers if the flower has the nectar he wants.”