UK Artist/Professor Ebony G. Patterson Awarded Tiffany Foundation Grant

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 16, 2018) — Ebony G. Patterson, associate professor of painting at the University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies, has already won her second major award in 2018 from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Patterson is one of only 30 artists to receive an unrestricted 2017 Biennial Grant worth $20,000 from the foundation to “produce new work and push the boundaries of their creativity.”

The 2017 winning artists, who work in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, craft and new media, were selected from a pool of 156 nominees put forth by artists, critics, museum professionals and Tiffany Foundation trustees. A jury selected the winners based on talent and individual artistic strength.

Established in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of Tiffany & Company founder Charles Louis Tiffany, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation remains one of the largest single sources of unrestricted monetary grants to artists working in America today. Since 1980, the biennial competition has distributed nearly $10,000,000 in awards to 500 artists nationwide.

Ebony G. Patterson, born in Kingston, Jamaica, is a painter and mixed media artist. She has presented solo exhibitions and projects at several institutions in the United States including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2016); the Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art (2016); and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2016). Her large-scale solo show “Dead Treez” originated at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (2015), and traveled to Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2015), Boston University Art Galleries (2016), and UB Art Galleries, University at Buffalo, New York (2017). She was a 2017 Artist in Residence at the Rauschenberg Foundation and a recipient of the 2015 Joan Mitchell Foundation Art Grant.

Patterson’s work was included in the 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016); the 12th Havana Biennial (2015); “Prospect.3” (2014) in New Orleans; and the Jamaica Biennial 2014 at the National Gallery of Jamaica, in Kingston. Her work can be found in many public collections, including The Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Arts and Design; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina; Speed Art Museum, in Louisville, Kentucky; and the National Gallery of Jamaica.

Patterson has been teaching painting and mixed media at UK since 2007. She received her bachelor’s degree from Edna Manley College in Kingston, Jamaica, and her master’s degree from the Sam Fox College of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.

This is Patterson’s second major award this year. In January, she was one of 45 artists presented with a 2018 United States Artists (USA) Fellowship Award in Visual Arts carrying a $50,000 unrestricted cash prize.

The UK School of Art and Visual Studies, at the UK College of Fine Arts, is an accredited member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of art studio, art history and visual studies, art education, and digital media and design.