Sept. 26, 2006 -- University of Virginia visiting artists in residence Corey Drieth and Ebony Patterson will exhibit their work at the Off Grounds Gallery beginning Friday, Oct. 6 with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

The exhibit “Intimate Matter” features Drieth’s geometric abstract paintings that explore “how contemplative experiences feel,” said Drieth in his artist statement. “What I have found is that they inhabit transitional experiences from daily life — in the blossoming of the undergrowth in early spring, in the latent energy of a blank sheet of notebook paper, in the tense light just before the arrival of a prairie storm. They are elegant and minimal in their form, they are at once abstract and intimate, rhythmic and spacious, mysterious and lucid, fleeting and beautiful.”

Patterson’s work focuses on the “female body and its function as object.” In her artist statement she describes the female body as a “container, depository and passage. It is carcass: it bleeds, it smells without a day’s wash; it is fragrant, moist and susceptible to all kinds of infections. I am overwhelmed by images, thoughts, words and materials that reference these ideas.”

Drieth, a native of Northern Colorado, attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is a visiting artist in the McIntire Department of Art this year where he is teaching drawing.

Patterson, who is teaching drawing and printmaking at U.Va., was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and is a graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica. She received her Master in Fine Arts in printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

For more information about the exhibit contact the McIntire Department of Art at (434) 924-6123.