Born in Long Beach, NY, and raised in Miami Beach, Kandi Stirman discovered her creative voice early, mastering macramé as a teenager and weaving it into her father’s rope business. Alongside her husband, artist and visionary Rollin Stirman, she later transformed Miami Cordage into a certified rope manufacturer—laying the groundwork for a unique dialogue between craft, industry, and art.
Kandi’s artistic career came into full focus in 2016, when she became a studio mate with her niece, artist Sara Kaplan, in Miami’s Little Haiti. With Rollin’s engineering guidance, she completed her first major commission: a 100-foot rope sculpture at the Hotel Marseilles in South Beach, a work that remains on view.
In 2017, Kandi began collaborating with her daughter, Katie Stirman. Drawing on her extensive background in theater and creative engineering, Katie brings a dynamic counterpart to Kandi’s vision. Together, they create monumental rope-based sculptures that blend material innovation with poetic form. Their works are featured in prominent public and private spaces across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, with clients including Windstar Cruise Lines, The Regatta Grove, The Wharf Miami, The Wharf Ft. Lauderdale, The Ray Hotel, and numerous private collections.
Beautiful Door
Rope, yarn, aluminum ring. 6 feet diameter x 10 feet height.
In New Atlantis, a city both seductive and doomed, the Beautiful Door becomes a temple of allure and defiance. Suspended like a portal, it invites viewers to step inside, confronting the eroticism of the female form. The work thrives in contradiction; sacred yet provocative, intimate yet monumental. It honors the feminine force that empowers women, “accepting all donations” with unapologetic power. As Miami slips towards the sea, this piece stands as a totem celebrating power, vulnerability, eroticism and sanctuary – honoring the female body, not as an object, but as a threshold.
