3S Artspace
Portsmouth NH
OCTOBER 7 - NOVEMBER 13
Part archive, part installation, and part storytelling, Punto in Aria: A Repairing Mend is a deeply engaging and site-specific installation that invites the viewer not only to stay a while, but to return and witness changes throughout the show. Patricia Miranda’s deep dive into the traditional art of lace making, combined with her vision for upcycling and reimagining her source material, has coalesced into something entirely fresh and collaborative.
Programs:
Cochineal and Lace: Making Color from Nature workshop: October 30, 1-4pm,
Lace Sewing Circle: November 6, 4-6pm
Gallery Talk/Walk with the artist: November 13, 1-2:30pm
Zoom conversation with the artist and 3S Artspace Director Beth Falconer: date tbd.
Artist Statement:
My work is grounded in historic material practices, rituals of grief and mourning, and the intimacy of textile in women’s lives. I work with donated repurposed lace and linens in site responsive installations. The labor of care by women is present through mending, remembering, collecting, preserving. The lace is alternately hand-dyed with natural dyes and sewn into shroud-like tapestries and installations, then layered with objects of lamentation, ex-votos, reliquaries, and other ritualized forms traditionally offered to saints in request, gratitude, or devotion.
Recent projects began with family lace from my grandmothers, Emenegilda and Rebecca, and grew to include donations of lace sent from around the world. The donations, initially unsolicited, started in March of 2020 during the pandemic and continue to arrive at my doorstep today. Alongside the artworks, this has grown into an ongoing research project, The Lace Archive, an historical community archive of donated lace works and family histories. The Archive is currently comprised of thousands of pieces of lace, with as many yet to be documented. The textiles are often accompanied by stories of the family and the maker, and include antique, vintage, new, hand and machine-made lace in animal, vegetable and synthetic fibers. Each piece of lace is photographed, measured, and alongside the notes and letters, collected in the archive before being used in a work. The community is invited to participate in the ongoing dyeing and sewing of the works. The care and generosity people have shared through their donations is instrumental to the work, through intimate stories about the lace, the makers, the family who preserved it, and the desire for it to live on in the archive and in the work. The repurposed bio-degradable materials allow for monumental site-responsive works with a small ecological footprint. The dyes reflect complex histories; ancient, native, and invasive colors including mineral clay, oak gall wasp nests, and cochineal insects. The femininity of the lace exerts a trace of domestic labor; the visceral dyes retain a stain of their environmental origins. These materials act as witnesses, carriers of scientific, ecological and cultural histories in the work.
*Art 'Round Town is a gallery walk in Portsmouth on the first Friday of each month.
STAY CONNECTED TO THE GALLERY FROM HOME: VIEW THE VIRTUAL GALLERY!
https://www.3sarts.org/gallery/punto-in-aria
Opening Reception / Meet the Artist: Friday, October 7 / 5-8pm
- Free and open to the public
- Opening Reception coincides with Art Round Town*