Miriam Carpenter is an artist, researcher, and designer based in New Hope, Pennsylvania. After graduating from RISD in 2006, she designed furniture alongside Mira Nakashima for seven years. 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. She is currently working as an independent artist while enjoying teaching across the country.
About her work and inspiration, Miriam writes:
"Throughout my life I have sought the companionship of trees, and have developed an ever deepening reverence for them. Trees are intelligent, resilient, majestic, and adaptable. When a tree has reached the end of its life, the shadow of what once was presents another gift in the form of a satiny, warm, sensual material.
Each piece of wood has its own story—reflections of moments specific to place and time within the architecture of a species. Each tree has its own experience and characteristics uniquely formed by its geographical location, the effects of the seasons, wind, rain, and what grew beside it. The history of each year is physically recorded in each ring slowly reacting to external and internal stresses after it has died and been cut into lumber. Reading this story in the grain is just as exciting to me as transforming it into an artifact. The more time I spend with each piece of wood, the deeper my understanding grows. Respecting its capacity and understanding its potential, I can be more thoughtful in how I bring the piece to completion.
Everything that I create is an experiment. Whether the approach is multi-axis split turning, bending, or carving by hand, it is always an exploration of the material’s unique potential."  Miriam's work is carried by Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia and can be seen at Design Miami / Art Basel 2016 in Moderne Gallery's space. 
http://www.cleavermagazine.com/a-presence-in-wood-wood-sculpture-by-miri...
https://buckscountyplaybook.com/2013/07/06/artist-profile-miriam-carpenter/