As a bicultural artist, Sarah Alsaied makes work that straddles Eastern and Western cultures, and the complex issues of identity and the collapse of social, cultural, racial, and gendered borders. Through the use of clay, fiber, and installation art, she expresses aspects of herself and challenges stereotypes of Arab women.

Alsaied sculpts strange figures, surreal and haunting. She distorts the human figure to express identity, evoke emotions, and explore ideas of otherness, and invisibility. These figures evoke a sense of unease and disorientation in the viewer. Her color palette of black, white and red holds significant cultural and symbolic meaning within the Arab world and she uses the leading marks of color to represent the passage of time and to pay homage to her cultural heritage. She incorporates fibers in her work to represent the weaving and unraveling of her dual cultural identities. She uses fabric as a symbol to celebrate identity and honor privacy. Clay is used for its historical significance and its ability to record touch. She uses yarn to express a wide range of emotions such as connection/grief/love, and belonging. Through the combination of malleable and permanent qualities of the materials, Sarah explores and expresses the complexities of identity.

Sarah Alsaied is an artist from Kuwait based in the Midwest, United States. Sarah earned a BA in Studio Arts with ceramics emphasis at University of Southern Indiana (2018) and an MFA with sculpture emphasis at Wichita State University (2022). In 2021, Sarah contributed in organizing, co-creating, and co-designing of Juneteenth Parade Float in Wichita, KS, and reimagined the homecoming parade mascot puppet for Wichita State University. Recently, she finished a residency at the New Harmony Clay Project Center. Outside of the studio, Sarah is a wanderer who enjoys cooking, sporty activities, jewelry making, and video games.

Laura Dirksen’s work embodies her own cognitive dissonance and becomes a vehicle to understand her conflicted and evolving value system. This value system includes, but is not limited to, societal pressures within dairy culture, coding systems incorporating domestic and livestock materials, as well as trends, age, diagnosis, and religion. Laura’s visual language is a product of how she processes materials and navigates the world, forging sculptures as a celebration of techniques blended with her personal traditions and heritage.

Laura Dirksen is from Maria Stein, Ohio. She received her BFA from Bowling Green State University specializing in ceramics and painting in 2019. Afterwards she completed a two-year Post Baccalaureate Program at Kent State University. Laura recently received her MFA from Penn State University in Spring 2023, before joining us at the Archie Bray Foundation.

Austin Coudriet’s studio practice is an ongoing tactile conversation between soft amorphous forms and rigid linear components. Daily visual experiences of infrastructure found within the natural environment are re-contextualized through the lens of play into nonrepresentational, interactive sculpture. Amid a collision of rudimentary shapes, inspired by Deconstructivist architecture, compositions are rendered. Lines find edges, and shapes find volume.

Austin is currently a long-term artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation located in Helena, Montana. Here he is able to pursue his passions of teaching, and working as a studio artist. He divides his studio practice between creating large-scale sculptures intended for public art installations, and design-oriented objects. In 2019 Austin received a BFA from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln with dual emphasis in ceramics and sculpture. Austin completed residencies at Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and LUX Center for the Arts. Most recently, Austin completed a two-year residency at The Clay Studio of Missoula in Missoula, Montana.