Community Clay Workshops with Lauren Shapiro
This fall, Bakehouse Art Complex presents Future Pacific, an immersive, site-specific installation by Miami-based artist Lauren Shapiro that will feature large-scale, unfired clay structures that resemble architectural ruins covered with textures sourced from coral reefs.
To build the exhibition, Shapiro will engage the local community through a series of hands-on, physically-distanced workshops at the Bakehouse. Participants are not required to have previous experience in ceramics and may contribute to the installation by pressing clay into the silicone molds and then applying the forms to foundational structures inside of the gallery.
Workshops will take place throughout October, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:00 - 6:00pm and on Saturdays, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm.
Please enter via the pedestrian gate adjacent to the yellow building on 32nd Street. Street parking available.
Masks and physical-distancing are required. 10 tickets available per workshop session. Plastic face shields will be provided.
To register for a community clay workshop session, click here.
About the artist
Lauren Shapiro is a visual artist living and working in Miami, Florida. She earned an MFA from the University of Miami and a BFA from Florida Atlantic University. She utilizes a multi-step casting process in clay resulting in modular sculptures and installations that reference systems and visual orders found in nature. Her work draws inspiration from environmental research and data, ceramics and social practice. In 2019, she was awarded the Wavemaker Grant through Locust Projects, funded in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation and a Knight Arts Challenge grant for a project that will culminate at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in 2020. Recently, she received a broader outreach grant from the National Science Foundation for an art project based on coral reef research.
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This exhibition and accompanying public programming is made possible by the generous support from Thea, Jordyn, Jayde, Alexander, and Jonathan Mitzman, in honor of Robert Mitzman’s birthday and to celebrate his spirit of curiosity and imagination and the family’s interest in environmental protection advocacy.
Image: Detail of a silicone mold with coral texture and unfired clay pressing. Photo by Aaron Shapiro, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.