The Blue Horizon Project by Lauren Shapiro

Over the years, Lauren Shapiro has quietly supported local artists and sculptors as an artist-in-residence and master ceramicist at Bakehouse Art Complex. So, when we learned about Lauren’s public art initiative, The Blue Horizon Project, we began dreaming of ways to get behind her vision.  

The Blue Horizon Project is a proposal for a socially engaged sculpture that encourages environmental responsibility through community participation, innovative technology, and ceramics. The project involves designing ceramic components using silicone molds based on 3D-scanned coral reefs. As seen in the photos below, these ceramic pieces are then created during interactive workshops with our community's help. They are later fired, glazed, and affixed to a monumental, sinking arch sculpture, emulating the sensation of submerging beneath the sea.

Earlier this year, The Blue Horizon Project received a significant boost in its journey towards realization. Lauren was honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts with an Anonymous Was a Woman award, a recognition that not only validates the project's potential but also brings it closer to its financial goal.

Here are three ways our community is further supporting Lauren’s vision:

1) Snorkeling trips and clay molding workshops that invite us deeper into Lauren’s artistic process and build environmental responsibility around the coral reef crisis in Florida
2) Video and photo documentation to help Lauren share her mission with broader communities and to propel fundraising efforts
3) Unrestricted funding that celebrates Lauren’s creative practice and aligns with our mission to support artists with membership 

Beyond participating through Commissioner, please sign up for her mailing list to get involved in this multi-year adventure. 

Renders for proposed The Blue Horizon public sculpture, courtesy of the artist.

Lauren Shapiro, captured by Dr. Shireen Rahimi.

Photos of Lauren’s clay molding workshop with Miami Waterkeeper by Andrea Lorena. The Blue Horizon Project is made possible with support from Anonymous Was a Woman in partnership with The New York Foundation for the Arts, Commissioner, and the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.