In keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s vision and the McIntire School of Commerce's commitment to fostering well-rounded individuals, we embrace the intersection of art and commerce. Across the Commerce Complex, thoughtfully curated spaces showcase inspiring works that encourage creativity, critical thinking, and cultural awareness, enriching the experience for students, faculty, staff, and visitors alike.
Isabelle Abbot
About the artist: Isabelle Abbot received her B.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Virginia in 2005 and her M.F.A. in Painting from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro in 2011. In 2011, Abbot returned to Virginia to teach as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Virginia through 2013 and has been a Visiting Lecturer at Bridgewater College. She has attended esteemed residencies in the U.S. and internationally, including the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork, Ireland, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Mount St. Angelo, VA. Abbot’s work can be found in important collections both public and private.
Artist statement: Every painting is a series of questions I pose to myself, about the landscape, about my relationship to my environment, about the specificities of where I am. How does this moment feel? How does the atmosphere, the topography, the light affect me? How can I communicate these sensations honestly and clearly? The answers come through editing, through paring down and cutting out extraneous detail to discover what is essential about a place. I am a painter of a very specific region, and I want my viewers to feel instinctively where these paintings come from. As a Virginia native and a graduate of the University of Virginia, the Piedmont region at the foot of the Blue Ridge is integral to my identity. The shapes of the land, the colors of the mountains, the way the weather shifts the light, are all deeply connected to all my memories and root me in who I am as an artist and a person. I am paying homage, as well as feeding my own need to be oriented, to be grounded, to know where I am and to feel connected to that place.
Sanda Iliescu
About the artist: Sanda Iliescu is a practicing artist who makes paintings, drawings, and collages in a variety of media ranging from watercolor on paper and acrylics on canvas, to recycled paper and other found materials. Outside the studio, she makes murals and public art installations, often with students at the University of Virginia, where she is Professor of Architecture and Art. Born in Romania, Iliescu emigrated to the United States when she was 17 years old. She received her B.S.E. in Civil Engineering and her M.Arch in Architecture, both from Princeton University. Among her professional awards are The Rome Prize, a McDowell fellowship in painting, and The Distinguished Artist Award of the New Jersey State Council of the Arts. Scholarly writing on Iliescu’s artwork includes essays by Paul Barolsky, Commonwealth Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, and Carmen Bambach, curator of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Artist statement: CITIES OF THE MIND (Sanda Iliescu, 2019-2025; colored pencil on paper; 30 drawings, 8 x 8 inches each)
These drawings celebrate the power of the simple geometric grid and the expressive possibilities of nuanced, luscious colors. If their grids of intersecting verticals and horizontals are intended to convey an idea of rationality and structure, I hope their vividly colored transparent planes evoke a contrasting sense of sensuality and pleasure. Instead of being rigid and orderly, I wanted these richly colored grids to appear soft and pliant, as if floating in an atmosphere produced by subtle hues and delicate textures.
As I made these drawings, I came to think of them as my imaginary cities. While their gridded structure reminded me of the order and rationality in the plan of so many American cities—e.g., the repeating rectangular blocks defined by Manhattan’s streets and avenues—their rich colors were to me reminiscent of the delights and pleasures that cities can offer. They became my attempt to capture the amazing variety of urban life. To me, a city is an organized environment of buildings, offices, plazas, parks, playgrounds, and other spaces where people can live and work. But it is also a place of infinite sensation and pleasure, one in which the scent of food in a marketplace may recall a childhood memory; the flight of a bird may fill us with wonder and a peculiar sense of emotional lift, as if we ourselves could fly; a reflection in a glass plane may show us our fleeting facial expression and mirror the way we may feel at a particular moment in time…
But my imaginary cities may have, to some, a melancholy air as well. They do to me. Looking back on his life at the end of his Meditations, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that he was proud to have lived in a great city, by which he meant a fair, just, and beautiful society. Reading his words, I wonder how many of us today can say the same. In so many ways, our cities today are filled with ugliness: crime, filth, inequality, despair. My cities of the mind are then cities that are filled with a longing that can never be realized. They are my attempt to create what does not exist: an ideal city in which a sense of balance, justice, and beauty prevails.
Annie Harris Massie
About the artist: Born in Charlottesville, VA, Annie Harris Massie resides in Lynchburg. Massie received her B.A. in Studio Art from Hollins College and M.A. in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her works grace numerous significant private and public collections, including that of the Boars Head Resort, Dominion Energy, the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, and the Bank of the James in Lynchburg, among others. In addition to painting, Massie founded McKinnon and Harris Inc. with her brother, William McKinnon Massie Jr., to manufacture their original designs of furniture for the landscape, which has won numerous design awards.
Artist statement: EARLY SPRING (oil on canvas; 72 x 78 inches)
The painting Early Spring adheres to a limited palette of neutral colors to depict the quiet of early spring before the riot of bright spring colors. Evocative of the lightness and subtlety of spring, the painting shows trees with a view of foothills in the distance. A point of interest is the young tree on the left side of the painting in both light and shadow of the more mature trees. Early Spring and the companion painting Fall are both developed from smaller plein air studies in the field.
FALL (oil on canvas, 72 x 78 inches)
The painting Fall depicts trees in the deep colors of fall on a mountainside with distant foothills, the unique rolling topography characteristic of the piedmont. The focal point is the young beech tree in the central foreground, smaller than the mature trees but more dominant. Light, ephemeral and transitory, is always the real subject for me apart from the subject matter of trees, fields, etc. As a counterpoint to the fluctuating ethereal light is an awareness of the plasticity and weight of paint.
Ato Ribeiro
About the artist: Ato Ribeiro (b. 1989) is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of media including sculptural installation, drawing, and printmaking. He was born in Philadelphia, PA, and spent the formative years of his life in Accra, Ghana, before relocating to Atlanta, GA, where he is currently a member of the Studio Artist Program at Atlanta Contemporary. Ribeiro was a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2024 Biennial Grant Awardee; served as a 2024 Artist in Residence at the Fountainhead Residency, a 2022/2023 MOCA GA WAP Fellow, and a 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awardee; and has received Fellowships at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Madison, ME. His work is in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and Mercedes-Benz USA Headquarters, among others. He earned his B.A. from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, and his M.F.A. in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
Artist statement: A Life Worth Living, 2025 (repurposed wood, wood glue, acrylic, HDPE; 1,008 x 72 x 1.25 inches)
The interests behind my creative practice stem from an urge to bridge my West African heritage with my African American identity in Western culture. As taught through the Adinkra symbol of Sankofa (meaning to return and retrieve it), my research mines through and honors a variety of shared and neglected histories in order to visually speak to my contemporary sense of cultural hybridity. The crux of my work draws from exploring modes of communication embedded within traditional textiles such as Ghanaian Kente cloth and African American quilts. My wooden kente and quilt works, mixed media installations and prints provide educational opportunities to seek out new points of reference, while preserving layers of African cultural heritage and varying ethnic perspectives.