Patricia Miranda’s work draws from the grammar, syntax, and history, of material culture through the use of historical and natural dyes and pigments in textiles, deconstructed and handmade books, and sculptural installations.

My research into art technologies from across diverse cultures and histories, from indigenous to introduced, through trade and conquest, from pre- to post-industrial, informs a philosophy of connection through both shared and unique forms of making. In recent work I use textiles, paper, and books hand-dyed with natural dyes and pigments, and include hair, pearls, and beads in a visceral lament to news of violence, especially against women. I consider the consequences of seeing ourselves as outside of nature, and therefore of each other. The destruction from that disconnect is wrought on our land and on our bodies. In a rhizomatic interconnected world, we are not separate; the earth is animated, objects have agency, enacting on us as much as we them. We imbue the world with our joy, our grief, our violence, and the physical world echoes back. This changes my engagement with materials, they become more collaborator than subject, in a call and response. Each material brings an autonomous history, from the chemistry of wasp nests, cochineal bugs, and earth pigments, to its shaping by human culture into textile, book, weapon. While grinding a bug or crushing a rock, I explore a sense of grief and desire in an intimacy tinged with mourning. Can a mineral mourn?

Patricia Miranda is a New York City based artist, curator, and educator, using interdisciplinary projects to build connections between art, science, history and culture. She is founder of MAPSpace, a gallery and project space in Port Chester, NY. In 2012 she developed a Collaborative Workspace Residency Program, inviting artists for seven residencies, ranging from installation, performance, to social practice. Miranda has been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah; Visiting Lecturer at Purchase College SUNY, Kutztown University, WCC Peekskill Center for Digital Arts; and been awarded Artist Residencies at I-Park, Weir Farm, Truro Center for the Arts, Spring Island Trust, Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio, and Vermont Studio Center. She received a grant from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts in 2014 for a collaborative project, "L/inked", inviting ten artists to collect oak gall wasp nests, historically used for making ink and dye, from nature centers and private land around the country. The artists collaborated on drawings using oak gall ink made from the collected galls, culminating in an exhibition of the collaborative drawings. Miranda was part of a year-long National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) grant creating art with homeless youth in Westchester County, NY. Miranda is the first Practitioner-in-Residence at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, a college of the University of New Haven, and led the first study abroad program at the university's campus in Prato, Italy, in spring 2017. She is core faculty at New Hampshire Institute of Art's low-residency MFA program, and teaches curatorial studies in the grad program at Western Colorado State University. She served as director and curator of the Gallery at Concordia College-NY from 2008-12. As an artist advocate, Miranda runs professional development and critique programs for artists around the country. Miranda has developed and led 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 has exhibited at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; the Cape Museum of Fine Art, Cape Cod MA; the Belvedere Museum, Vienna Austria; Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn, NY; and Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, NY. She received her MFA from MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and BFA in Sculpture from Purchase College SUNY.