Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, and educator. She is founder of The Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of pieces of lace and family histories, The Crit Lab, graduate-level critical seminars for working artists, and MAPSpace project space.
statement
From birth to death human bodies are wrapped in cloth; the fibers retain a visceral trace of this touch. My work is created using vintage lace and textiles repurposed from women around the world. I am committed to the visible meaning and history carried in these hand-me-down materials. The textiles are sewn into shroud-like tapestries, built into large hoop skirts, and hand-dyed with natural colors such as cochineal. The aggregation of tiny stitches into monumental works is a document of women’s labor, evidence of invisible economies of craft and care. The work is insistently feminine, it purposefully takes up space, with a small ecological footprint. The sculptures, in the shape of oversize hoop skirts, are erotic metaphors for women’s lives. Their anthropomorphic forms conceal and reveal, shelter and nurture, resist and love. Slits and openings allow a view into the interior without the possibility of entry; inside hangs ghostly clothing, or hand-dyed bibles in lace girdle books. The ties of aprons read as forlorn arms in search of a body to wrap around. I layer the works with vintage books and objects of lamentation, akin to ex-votos, reliquaries, and other bodily forms offered in request, gratitude, or devotion. Making this work is an act of mending, remembering, collecting, and preserving. Tenderness and strength are equal in a beautiful almost monstrous femininity. A body that refuses to comply. My work is a feminist manifesto of softness.
The textiles are gathered mainly from The Lace Archive, an ongoing community repository of thousands of donated textiles and women’s histories. Each donation is documented before being used in a work. The Archive formed after women began sending me boxes of textiles, accompanied by photos, letters, and stories of the family and maker. I recognized this as a community historical archive, representing the untold labor of unknown women. Donors do not want to sell or discard these materials, most were kept for generations. People donate so their stories will be preserved, in memory of the women who created them, and reborn as an artwork. Myriad textiles come to my door; lace, linens, skirts, aprons, napkins, handkerchiefs, tablecloths and duvet covers, embroidered in colorful threads, crocheted in complex patterns, or with unfinished needle work. They include needle and bobbin lace, crochet, tatting, hand and machine-made, from a mother, sister, auntie, grandmother or great-grandmother. I accept all donations; the sole criterion for inclusion is that a family member preserved it and wanted to donate to my project. The Archive documents the tradition of textiles being crafted, used, reused, cut apart, and transformed, through economic necessity, in care of loved ones, and for the human need of beauty. These stored histories are integral to my work. This feels especially urgent in this moment, when the autonomy of women’s bodies is under the peril of legal and social control by governmental and religious institutions and individuals.
The Lace Archive
The Lace Archive is the heart center of my work. These projects began with family lace from my Italian and Irish grandmothers, Ermenegilda Eugenia Glorinda Fungaroli Miranda, and Rebecca Cogan. After I posted images on social media of dyeing lace with cochineal insect dye, an outpouring of initially unsolicited donations of lace from around the world began to arrive, and the Archive was born. It is ongoing, and comprised of thousands of pieces of lace and textile still being documented. The complex form of lace, dismissed as grandma’s doilies, retains traces of the bodies of women, and their economic and craft histories. Donations are intimate items with no commodity value, created for a home they might never leave. They are tangible acts of love, a labor of care circulating inside the domestic sphere. The generosity shared through these donations is instrumental to my work, through stories about the lace, the makers, the women who preserved it, and the desire for it to live on in the work and in the archive.
The red works are comprised entirely of donated lace. Recent works have focused on cochineal insect dye, a material that holds its own cultural and political history inside the work, and communicates a visceral bodily intensity. Each piece of lace is individually hand-dyed four or five times before being hand-sewn into a larger work. The lace acts as witness and document.
consulting and curatorial
I love working with artists to support their vision and practice. Together we craft an ethical ecosystem that supports each artist's life. I bring decades of experience, along with a wealth of energy and expertise to the table - but I don't own the table. The table belongs to all of us. This is the framework for all my collaborations and work with artists. I curate at MAPSpace and independently, and work with artists in critique and professional practice both privately and in the Crit Lab. With years of teaching professional practice to undergrad, grad and working artists, I have developed pragmatic and ethical structures that support artists in creating a rigorous soulful ecosystem for their work. This happens through what I consider the 3-legged stool of the artist: The intuitive cognition of the studio, the reflective cognition of analysis and critique, and in ongoing writing about the work. I offer consults for writing statements and proposals, preparing portfolios for grants and proposals, and use a website analyses to be sure the artist's vision is visible in representations of work in the digital space. Together we build ways to be accountable to the desire of our work. Every consultation incorporates a personal and socially conscious framework for building a sustainable garden suited to each artist's unique life. Artist-run culture and community are fundamental to all of my work. I believe that art holds a space open for complexity, empathy, beauty, and hope. We need this more than ever.
bio
Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, educator, and founder of the artist-run orgs The Crit Lab and MAPSpace, where she developed residencies in Port Chester, Peekskill, and Italy. In 2021 she founded the Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of donated lace works and family histories. She has received grants from the Barbara Deming Fund for feminist work (2024); Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation (2022);Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (2021); two artist grants from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts (2021/2014); an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Relief Grant (2021), and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth (2004-5). She has been awarded residencies at the RUC Rural Contemporary Residency in Italy; the Constance Saltonstall Foundation; I-Park Foundation; Weir Farm Foundation; Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio. Miranda has developed education programs for K-12, museums, and institutions, including Franklin Furnace, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution. She is a noted expert on the history and use of natural dyes and pigments, and teaches about environmentally sustainable art practices. As faculty at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (2005-19) she led the first study abroad program in Prato, Italy (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include: Five Points Art Center, (Torrington, CT), the Olin Fine Art Center (Washington PA), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, NH), Jane Street Art Center, Garrison Art Center (Hudson Valley, NY), ODETTA Gallery, and Maine Window DUMBO (NYC). Group exhibitions include Museo Camuno, (Breno, Italy); Spartanburg Art Museum (Spartanburg, SC); Dunedin Fine Art Center (Dunedin FL); HV MOCA (Peekskill NY), The Lyman Allyn Museum (New London, CT), Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA), Williamsburg Art+Historical Center, The Clemente Center (NYC), The Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at UConn Avery Point, (Groton, CT). Her work has been featured in PiùValli TV (Italy), Movida Terre Camune Magazine (Italy), Art New England (2022), Hudson Valley One (2022) and Brooklyn Rail, (2021).