Miranda Leigh

Miranda Leigh is an interdisciplinary artist who designs and creates exquisite objects of power and virtue. She is the founder and creative director of Joyaux Marisol, a social enterprise dedicated to healing, protecting, and empowering women, especially survivors of gender-based violence.

Miranda was conceived in Paris and born in New York City in 1973 under the sign of Pisces.  Her Jewish and Christian ancestry includes British, French, German, Greek, Latvian, and Russian blood.  She received her first lessons in color and composition from her paternal grandmother Sara Pildes, a New York Abstract Expressionist painter.  From her mother’s side Miranda inherited a love of antiquity, beauty, fashion, romance, and travel.

Torn between art, ballet, and academics as a child, Miranda’s fate was sealed at the age of six after winning an art competition with a drawing inspired by Joan Aiken’s story “A Necklace of Raindrops.” Fascinated with Greek mythology, Miranda skipped the third grade, competed in Latin and French in middle school, and was translating Ovid and Virgil by the age of sixteen. Trips to Europe (England, France, Germany, and Italy) and to the Far East (India and Japan) informed her aesthetic and worldview while growing up.

Miranda earned her M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from The Bard Graduate Center in New York City. For her thesis on a unicorn cup in Vienna, she researched ancient lapidary treatises and European regalia (crowns, scepters, orbs, parasols, etc.). While at the BGC, Miranda made a discovery about Mary’s bridal crown in the Ghent altarpiece, her artistic touchstone. The late Dr. Carol Jean Purtle invited Miranda to present her findings to the Historians of Netherlandish Art Society at the 2005 College Art Association conference. Their rendez-vous with Dr. Marc de Mey in front of the altarpiece remains a cherished memory. To further her knowledge of gemstones, Miranda went on to obtain a G.G. from The Gemological Institute of America, after which she worked briefly for Sotheby’s jewelry department, The National Jewelry Institute, and The Patti Cadby Birch Foundation.

In the fall of 2005, Miranda enrolled in a two-week night course at GIA to learn basic jewelry-rendering techniques. She arrived home after the first week and began translating her ideas into pencil and gouache on vellum. Seventy-two hours passed blissfully without food or sleep, yielding a portfolio of designs that she continues to realize. She has since pursued a classical education akin to that of ancient and Renaissance masters, but with a feminist agenda.

Miranda designed the Marisol® umbrella in 2009 in response to the femicide in Eastern Congo. In 2011, she accompanied a delegation led by playwright-activist Eve Ensler to the D.R.C. to visit Panzi Hospital and City of Joy, a revolutionary healing and training center for survivors of gender-based violence (see the Netflix documentary here). Miranda belongs to the Population Council’s Adolescent Girl & Creativity Network, a group of artists and activists focused on building the health, social, economic, and cognitive assets of adolescent girls. To establish the umbrella as a work of art, Miranda studied digital marketing and sustainability at Glasgow Caledonian University’s Fair Fashion Center in New York. She is currently training with Suchinta Abhayaratna, ThD, to facilitate mandala workshops around the globe using various forms of holistic and energy healing.

Miranda feels incredibly grateful to all of the teachers, mentors, and friends who have encouraged and guided her along the way:  Valentin Yotkov; Jeanette Caines and faculty of The Jewelry Arts Institute (NYC); Cecelia Bauer; Olga Doutkevitch; Tatyana Zhurkov, Samuel Kudish, and Ilya Mirochnik of The Bridgeview School of Fine Arts (NYC); Carolyn Santonicola of Classic Ballet School (Closter, NJ); Ken Ludden of The Margot Fonteyn Academy; Ekaterina Schelkanova and Irina Kolpakova of The Open World Dance Foundation; Anastasia Erchov; Marjorie Liebert; Nancy Egol Nikkal; Nancy Sempreora, Eileen Deeb, and George Penny of The Elisabeth Morrow School (Englewood, NJ); Robert Brisk, Evelyn Hirshfeld, and Frimi Sagan of Dwight Englewood School (Englewood, NJ); David Cox and Kathy van Norden (K.P.V.N.) of Middlesex School (Concord, MA); Carol Krinsky of New York University; Susan Weber, Stefanie Walker, Elizabeth Simpson, Rochelle Gurstein, Beth Holman, and Andrew Morrall of The Bard Graduate Center (NYC); Alain Gruber; Carol Jean Purtle; Ernst van der Wetering; Sundaram Tagore; Jessica Hirshbein; Bruce Cohen; Gilbert Center; Michael Cohen; Pat Mitchell; Eve Ensler; Judith Bruce; Shirin Neshat; Melba Ruffo di Calabria; Phuong Tranvan; Valerie Boucard; Pinar Kayaalp; Kyrce Swenson; LaVelle Olexa; Shahzoda Rasulova; and many more.

Miranda currently resides in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.