Mimi Shapiro

Mimi Shapiro is a mid-career collage artist who believes that creativity is a life skill. She has worked as a graphic designer for pharmaceuticals and AT&T. She has taught as a roster artist through Millersville University, going into schools to inspire and motivate.

Residencies include:

• Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in Book Arts & Writing

• Atlantic Center for the Fine Arts, New Smyrna Beach, with Ntozake Shange

• Fellowship, Paper and Book Intensive, Santa Barbara, California

• Book Arts Lecturer with hands-on workshops aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2

• Silversea Cruises, Artist-in-Residence aboard the Silver Cloud for the World Cruise

Her profile is featured in Kolaj Magazine: Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory

Exhibitions:

• New Zealand to Italy

• New York to Mexico

• Vorres Museum, Attica, Greece

• ArtColle, Sergines, France

• Included in Kanyer Art Collection and Archive 2024

• ARTisStart, BookArts Archive, The Netherlands Invitational

• International Museum de Collage, Mexico

• Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida – 39th Annual Hortt Exhibition - Best in Show, September 1997

• Lessendra International Painting & Mixed Media Competition

• Quadratfuß Exhibition - NX2 Berlin; art traveled then to Art Budapest

Making art is a passion—a way of working and exploring the “what if” possibilities of collage and working in series. Creativity is a life skill, and it’s a big part of who she is. Tools include the X-Acto knife and glue; the light burning inside is how the page comes to life.

Mimi likes to set parameters by adding another challenge to her creative process. Shapiro works in a variety of notebooks, including a publisher's mockup of 900 pages, playing with freedom and giving herself permission to take more chances. Altered books and new ideas keep spinning as there is more studio time. Artists make art because this is what they do.

Shapiro lives and works in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, and when traveling, almost anywhere.

Statement

Mimi Shapiro is a collage artist who likes to create a series of works that connects one thought. Art can let the viewer travel through time and space by standing and letting the eye roam around the page. Viewing the artwork lets the viewer go on an imaginary journey. Small treasures visible in each room allow the viewer to access stored memories, plus a renewed sense of self, with different riffs on familiar themes.

Creativity always requires something new—a break from the twin opiates of habit and cliché. Galleries are important to cities, giving patrons a new experience each time they visit. Artists help by making the experience something to look forward to...the new!

I selected these 10 images, from this series of 16: "Poetic Spaces" created in 2023 & 2024, are imaginary interiors where the art can let you go on a journey without being anywhere but here. The images provide fragments of traveling to a variety of places. Along with a book of poems that accompanies each piece, Art and Poetry of Imaginary Interiors & Poetry about the Interior Life.

My series "Poetic Spaces" is not really about interior design but the art of collage and the scope of my imagination. Images can be out of place; things are juxtaposed and fantastical—images to think about. Design thinking is an art, a science, and a way of planning the architecture of space to create a functional interior. Art is known intuitively; there is a rightness to the invented flat plane. The answers depend on the questions asked.

Random influences are essential to my art making. What happens when an image encounters another image on the page? It's a paradox, there is a pattern, a lightning shift—a visual form of metaphor. Collage can attain a cosmic speed limit that transcends ordinary time.

Shapiro lives and works in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, and while traveling, most anywhere.