Color photograph of a light skinned woman with wavy blond hair wearing glasses and an orange jumpsuit

Miranda E. Mote

Garden Club of America/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize
September 1, 2023–July 5, 2024
Profession
Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Pratt Institute
Lecturer, Program in Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Project title
Botanography and Botanic Gardens: The Italian Art of Nature Printing and Its Influence on Early American Gardens and Botanical Language
Project description

Botanography and Botanical Gardens is a historical, artistic, and pedagogical project. My first objective is to document aspects of the culture of nature printing at orti botanici in Florence, Padua, and Pisa as foundational sources for nature printing as a Western art and science. Secondly, I will examine examples of Italian nature prints to reconstruct their printing methods to further develop techniques of my own creative botanical print work. Lastly, I will continue to develop my own curriculum of elementary and secondary school STEAM (arts-focused STEM) pedagogy using a variety of historical methods based on a deeper analysis and interpretation of nature printing as an art and science. This project is as relevant to my design and history teaching in university programs of architecture and landscape architecture as it is to my efforts to connect youth with the palliative and cultural aspects of trees and gardens in urban communities.