Date: Friday, May 30th - Sunday, June 1st, 2025
Times: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Cost: $600
Level: Intermediate and Advanced Makers
Workshop Description
The Ceramic Furniture Masterclass is a three day interactive workshop where participants will fabricate a chair, stool, or side table. Each student will learn Austin’s coil and slab-building techniques with an emphasis on moisture control and proper attachment styles. Austin will instruct on where, when and how, to add internal supports for optimal weight distribution for each piece of furniture.
Students will learn how to enclose forms, construct shrink slabs, properly dry each chair, and how to move and fire finished works. Austin will also discuss multiple methods for mending surface cracks at each stage of the process. This course is designed for Intermediate or advanced makers, not for beginning students.
*Firing work at this studio is an option but comes with extra cost.
*Participants are responsible for coordinating and shipping works. Austin will speak more about this the first day of class
About the Instructor
Austin Coudriet was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 2019 he earned his BFA with a dual emphasis in sculpture and ceramics from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. There he focused on fabricating large ceramic sculptures and expanding his skills in the woodshop. Austin is currently a long term artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts 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 design-oriented sculptures, ceramic furniture, and hand-built vessels.
Austin has done a number of residencies, most recently he was a long term resident artist at the Clay Studio of Missoula in Missoula, Montana (2021 -2023). In 2021 Austin completed a two year residency at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York. There, he helped grow the community studio by: firing kilns, mixing glazes, working in the gallery, running workshops and lectures, and performing routine maintenance on studio equipment.
During the start of the pandemic, Austin moved back to Nebraska for six months, where he was offered a fellowship position at the LUX Center for the Arts and renovated their gallery space. Austin helped found a ceramic collective group called Mud Ties in 2019. He is currently leading both the Social Outreach and the Social Media team.