June 11 – July 29, 2026 

Opening Reception: Thursday June 11, 6-8PM

Fermata: a prolongation at the discretion of the performer of a musical note, chord, or rest beyond its given time value

also : the sign denoting such a prolongation

Fermata brings together two series of work by Anne Patterson (b. 1960) created during the Covid-19 pandemic. Time moved in different directions during this global prolongation: days bled into one another, yet the seasons asserted themselves with unusual clarity. Years on, Patterson’s work reflects this strange and quiet time for the artist, and for all of us.

The series of watercolors exhibited here were painted in response to the book Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill, which proposes a piece of classical music for every day of the year. Anne Patterson sees music. Across her practice, she translates sound into color, light, and movement. Each work is a record of her synaesthetic experience, inviting the viewer to inhabit her sensory world. For Year of Wonder, Patterson kept a musical diary — painting her visions of music each day for a year. Like the logbook of an explorer on a mystical journey, it is a catalogue of a world we cannot see. Together, the 365 paintings form a vast grid that envelops the viewer: a symphony of form and color that compresses a whole year into a single moment.

Accompanying Year of Wonder is Patterson's sculpture series The Paths We Take, inspired by the nature surrounding her Rhode Island home. Around Narragansett, these common reeds punctuate the landscape, framing the river in gently swaying lines. Bowing on the shore, their stalks are strummed by the wind. Downy inflorescences shivering, their fuzzy coats catching the light off the water. Patterson collects these reeds, studying their resilient forms: stoic through wind, rain, and snow. She casts them in stainless steel, creating an armored likeness of each delicate grass. As light skates across the metal, the particularity of each plant is preserved — a lasting portrait of a natural world that bends but does not break.

Anne Patterson is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her body of work consists of paintings, sculptures and installations that combine sculpture, architecture, lighting, video, music and scent. 

Patterson’s installations have filled cathedrals, office buildings, and museums across the world. In 2023, Patterson created Divine Pathways, her largest work to date measuring 75’ x 25’ x 125’. Murmuration, created for Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati consisted of over 1000 metal birds that flew from one end of the nave to the other. Art for Earth, commissioned by the fashion house Zegna, was made of thousands of lengths of fabric repurposed Zegna fabrics. 

Ascendant Light, a permanent installation that fills the lobby in Capital One’s Headquarters is in constant conversation with the shifting sunlight and varying shades of blue that radiate in from the outside. 

Her exhibition The Truth of the Night Sky for the Sarasota Art Museum in collaboration with composer Patrick Harlin filled four galleries with art, music and light. Patterson created a new body of sculptures, paintings and a ribbon installation inspired by the cosmos. 

Anne has exhibited her art and installations at museums, galleries, theaters and concert halls around the world including New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington DC; San Francisco; Pittsburgh; Aspen, CO; Italy; Denmark; and Spain. Her theatrical productions have included major venues across the US. 

Patterson has been awarded multiple CODAworx CODAawards and received a Creative Capital Award in 2008. She is a fellow of the Hermitage Artist’s Retreat.

She received her BA in Architecture from Yale University and her MA from The Slade School of Art in London.