“Commissioner x Lauren Shapiro”
Miami Beach Botanical Garden
(2025)

A Season 8 Commissioned Artist, Lauren Shapiro expands her ongoing exploration of ceramics as a vessel for memory, environment, and human history, creating a series of intimate ceramic tiles in an array of glazes, using her signature sculptural forms drawn from sea life, marine flora, and architecture. Each tile functions as a small archive of South Florida coastal ecosystems, translating fragile underwater textures into enduring clay reliefs.

The project culminated in a December 2025 reveal at Miami Beach Botanical Garden, where tiles were discovered through an interactive scavenger hunt across the garden’s grounds. By pairing research driven making with playful public engagement, the collaboration invited participants to consider their own relationship to place and ecology.