"Origins" by Miriam Carpenter

28" wide x 16" deep x 2" high.

Nerikomi technique. Hand-built, carved and burnished ceramic. Miriam Carpenter began her career designing furniture alongside Mira Nakashima for more than seven years upon graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. In 2013, her work was exhibited in “An Evolving Legacy” which featured collaborations by Mira and Miriam at the Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. In 2014, she was awarded the Windgate ITE Residency sponsored by the Center for Art in Wood together with four wood artists from Japan, Canada, West Ghana and the United States. The year following, she lived, worked, and studied with furniture makers, sculptors, scholars, and environmental stewards in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. Upon her return to the United States, her work was presented in a solo exhibi on, “Physical Poems of Romance,” at Messiah College. She has had the honor of teaching at Penland School of Crafts, Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Messiah College, and in joining with talented artists at Echo Lake Collaboration in Bucks County, PA, Emma International Collaboration in Saskatchewan, Canada and CollaboratioNZ in Whangarei, NZ. Her work has been exhibited most notably at the Wharton Esherick Museum, Moderne Gallery, Philadelphia International Airport, SOFA, Center for Art in Wood, Wayne Art Center and Saskatchewan Craft Council. Miriam was working as Artist-in-Residence at the Raymond Farm Center for Living Arts and Design in New Hope, PA until recently. Currently she is having a one-woman show at the Michener Museum of Art. ARTIST STATEMENT Living creatively shifts the way we move through the world and expands our perceptions. The inclination to create art sets us apart from other living things on this earth. It is a way of actualizing our intentions and deepens our capacity to love. It is an active universal language that creates ties, discovers compatibility, and allows us to realize connections. While creating ties, my hope is to evoke something in others that might broaden understanding and help perpetuate a passion to learn, nurture, respect, and explore. My process is of making—of staying present in the moment, of focus and flexibility—and is an ongoing lesson in non-attachment. Everything that I create is a reaction to the world around me and experimental in method, whether the approach is multi-axis split-turning on the lathe, steam bending, laminating, creating joinery or carving by hand. Much of my work is inspired by patterns in the physical world, and patterns we form with our lives. It is often driven to manifestation when I become captivated by an experience that I wish to communicate. The obstacles created by the work allows for tremendous growth and understanding as I search for solutions, creating new techniques and tools to find resolution. While working under Mira Nakashima, I was inspired by the effects different compositions of classical music had on the development and clarity of ideas and used a visual guide to the mathematics of music produced by a harmonograph to create a line of furniture. The simple, graceful arcs and intersections of these ratios created by the harmonograph guided the form and structure and most importantly, became an expression of music transposed into another language of art. Although we can break down into fractions and facts the creation of life, and the dividing, unfurling and unfolding unfathomable force of spring, I find myself meditating on birth – what it looks like, when I will see it again and how bearing witness to it as real lived experience or as contemplation affects our behavior. Through this thought, I have developed a technique to form multiple bilaterally symmetrical forms using the lathe. This involves creating a predetermined profile as a stable tangent point between two intersecting spheres before splitting and turning each piece individually to create the remaining sweeps and curves along the form. I use tools in the way they are traditionally intended, but always search for another way they might offer assistance. Currently, I am working on a large egg-shaped wall-hanging armoire with intersecting compound curves with bas-relief doors depicting imagery inspired by my sister’s plant pathology and microbe biology research. Although most of my work is “one-off,” over the past seven years I have developed an evolving series of delicately carved wooden feathers. Species with porous early wood, tight growth rings, and medullary rays that are slightly denser than that of the late wood, provide the type of structure I have found to be most resilient. The dense medullary rays project radially from the pith center to the outer bark through the vertical rings, offering an ability to shape incredibly thin undulating forms that expose the delicate pores. Through this study, I allow myself to pour out love with such intensity that what I create becomes embodied with a life that is viscerally connected to me. I must work slowly and diligently, holding the piece in the palm of my hand so that I can feel the wood move, bend, stretch, release and expand. The feather symbolizes that which is ethereal - the soul, contemplation - is deeply complex within the framework of a simple form, and is a testament to the resilience of nature. To me, it represents a story of life and death, and the evolution of our planet. For the past seven years I have been working as an independent artist, participating in artist residency programs as well as artist collaborations in the United States and abroad, and teaching. I am devoted to continuing along the path, learning as much as I can in my medium, as well as skills and techniques in other mediums. I will always be a student - seeking the advice and expertise of teachers I admire, and will always be a teacher - delighting in sharing what I have acquired and helping others develop. My practice is one of outreach and of introspection. It is about shifting perspective and creating opportunities.