Garrison Art Center

23 Garrison’s Landing, Garrison, NY 10524


PUNTO IN ARIA: Sculpture and Installation by Patricia Miranda

September 18 - November 7, 2021

Opening reception Saturday, September 18, from 5-7pm

Covid 19 restrictions permitting.

Contact: gallery@garrisonartcenter.org


Garrison Art Center is delighted to present PUNTO IN ARIA, a textile and sculptural

installation by Patricia Miranda. This will be Miranda’s first solo exhibition at Garrison

Art Center and, as Visiting Artist, will be exhibiting work in both galleries.


Punto in Aria (literally “stitch in air”) is an exhibition that includes monumental textile

sculpture and installation, and objects gilded with vintage and inherited gold leaf

depicting lace patterns from the collection. These materials are transformed using dyes

chosen for their long cultural history, some foraged directly from oak gall wasp nests,

cochineal insects, indigo, and clay, others sourced through suppliers. Dyestuff is left

unfiltered in the vat and the works are over-dyed multiple times, leaving raw material on

the surface. These site-responsive works expand upon the history of domestic labor

via the femininity of the lace while the visceral dyes retain a stain of their environmental

origins.


Miranda’s work is grounded in deep research into historic material practices, rituals of

grief and mourning, women’s labor, and the violence of environmental and gendered

commodification. Materials become witnesses, carriers of historical, ecological, and

cultural information that become subtext in the work. Hand-dyed and sewn into

shroud-like tapestries and installations. Layered with objects of lamentation akin to

ex-votos, reliquaries, and other ritualized forms traditionally offered to saints in request,

gratitude, or devotion. Forms are handmade using plaster, metal, hair and beads.

During the pandemic, Miranda posted studio images on social media of dyeing family

lace from the artist’s Italian and Irish grandmothers the lace with natural cochineal

insect dye. Donations of lace and linens from friends and strangers began to arrive in

her studio, unsolicited, resulting in an ongoing lace archive and research project,

currently comprising over 1500 pieces of lace. Before being incorporated into an

installation work, each piece is photographed, measured, and collected into the

archive. The offerings of lace are integral to the content of the work, tangible

participation from a community which includes family, friends and strangers from

around the world.


The Lace Archive is now a collaborative art and research project supported by an

individual artist grant received by the artist from ArtsWestchester. The project brings

people together to create monumental lace tapestries and to contribute to a historical

textile archive. The Lace Archive will be on view in the gallery in digital form and

interpreted into the lace installation.


The public is invited to add to the collection by bringing lace to the gallery throughout

the exhibition, as well as participating in family and adult workshops on Saturday,

October 23. Family workshop from 10:30 - 12:30, adult workshop from 1:30 - 4:30. An

in-gallery artist talk will follow on Oct 23 at 5:30pm.


Patricia Miranda is an artist, educator, independent curator, and founder of the artist

projects MAPSpace and The Crit Lab. She has been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio

Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah; and been awarded residencies

at I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio. She

has received artist grants from Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, Anonymous Was a

Woman Covid19 Relief Grant, and two individual artist grants from

ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts. She was part of a year-long NEA

grant working with homeless youth in Westchester County, and in 2010 was a finalist

for an MTA Arts in Transit project in Brooklyn. She served as director and curator of the

Gallery at Concordia College-NY from 2008-12. 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. Her work has been exhibited at ODETTA Gallery, ABC No Rio,

Wave Hill, and Rio II Gallery, in NYC; The Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at UConn Avery

Point, Groton, CT; the Cape Museum of Fine Art, Cape Cod MA; the Belvedere

Museum, Vienna Austria; and Garrison Art Center, Garrison NY.


For all press inquiries and high-resolution images contact Tricia McGoey Ashlaw,

Exhibitions Coordinator, at gallery@garrisonartcenter.org

Riverside Galleries at Garrison Art Center are open Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm, and

located on the banks of the Hudson River, next door to the Metro-North Hudson Line,

Garrison stop, one hour from Grand Central.


For more information about exhibitions

and other programs, please visit our website www.garrisonartcenter.org or call

845.424.3960. Please join in the conversation with Garrison Art Center via Instagram

@GarrisonArtCenter