Miriam McWilliam grew up on the beaches of Lorne, along Victoria's Great Ocean Road, filling her pockets with shells, driftwood and sea-worn treasures. The collecting never stopped, and neither did her love of nature and objects that carry the stories of another time and place.

She brings to her ceramics practice more than twenty years as a graphic designer and creative director, creating visual identities, publications, exhibition graphics, and event and experiential design across the cultural, arts and community sectors. Alongside this she has exhibited her own work and curated community art exhibitions in Australia and the UK, also completing an artist residency at Cradle Mountain Wilderness Gallery in Tasmania. The thread running through all of her work is a commitment to telling authentic stories and connecting people with joyful, hopeful experiences, always aiming to blur the line between art and design.

That same instinct shaped the homes and spaces she has designed, which have been featured in Inside Out, The Design Files, Kip & Co's Home Life series and Frankie Magazine, alongside her creative practice feature in LOST Magazine. Clay became the natural meeting point: colour, pattern, texture and three-dimensional form in a single material that connected her to the earth.

After finding her way into community studios in Blackwood and Ballarat, Miriam bought a kiln, transformed her Blackwood workshop and established Slow Rise Ceramics. She now hand-builds sculptural and conceptual work, facilitates curated workshops, and was selected for Moorabool Council's Hide + Seek Pathways Program to develop her concept for the 2027 festival.

Working on Wurundjeri Country in Blackwood, Victoria, her practice is grounded in hand-building, close observation and an evolving relationship with Place, community and nature immersion; leaning into her practice’s philosophy - 'The Art of Wild & Slow;’ exploring the unpredictable and slow nature of clay as a way of connecting with the earth and the nature that surrounds her. She makes work that invites a slower life and sparks imagination, pleasure and joy in the everyday, collapsing the distance between ourselves, each other and the natural world ~ Wild organic flow meets bold, striking minimalism.