Laurel Jay Carpenter is an installation/performance artist who has presented her work in New York City at venues including Exit Art/The First World, The Knitting Factory, Performance Space 122, Judson Church House, Nada, Here and Brooklyn's Borough Hall. She also participated in the 1999 Performance Art Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.

A 1999 MacDowell Colony Fellow, Laurel was also, in 1996, the Artist-in-Residence at The University of Southern Maine, creating two new pieces, as well as conducting a workshop introducing performance/installation to students and local artists. Incorporating bits of mundane and gestural movement into her visual work, Laurel creates what is considered performed installations. A common thread through much of her work is capturing a timeless and moody quality though the repetitiveness of women's traditional domestic tasks.

In her other life, Laurel was the PR/Marketing Director for Performance Space 122, and the Summer Studies Director for Parsons School of Design before deciding to forgo a dual career, and focus on making art. In 1999 she developed and began to teach a survival skills course for fine art students at Parsons. She has also served as the art teacher for K-8th grade students at a Catholic School in Harlem. During that time, Laurel co-authored a kids' art book, Fuzzy Fun.

Prior to moving to New York over ten years ago, Laurel earned a degree in her home town of Boston at Tufts University, and has also studied at the Museum School and Parsons. She has studied/lived in London and The Netherlands, as well. Currently, Laurel lives and works at Casa Gunga.