Laura Dirksen is an artist born and raised in Maria Stein, Ohio. Laura has always led a life in the dirt, playing in the mud and with the clay she harvested in the fields behind the farm she grew up on. She received her BFA in Studio Arts in 2019 from Bowling Green State University specializing in ceramics and painting, where she began her journey building predominantly large-scale sculpture. Afterward, she went on to complete a two-year Post Baccalaureate Program at Kent State University in 2021. Two years later, Laura would obtain an MFA from Penn State University in 2023. She has exhibited her work in both group and solo exhibitions across Ohio, as well as in California, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Washington.
Dirksen’s work is currently exhibited in the Archie Bray Galleries, and her work is in several private collections around the west coast, among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a CURS Research Grant, the Graham Endowed Fellowship, as well the Bray and Speyer Fellowships. Laura’s works were recently featured in Ceramics monthly. She is a Long Term Artist-in-Residence at the renowned Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, in Helena, Montana. Laura leads a practice in which she continually strives to develop her work, through material exploration and her mixing of media is crucial to the longevity of her practice. Laura has made works that range from the large scale sculptural and fabric installation to intimate functional wares found within the home.
Laura is an instructor, and has given lectures and workshops. Throughout the years, Laura’s work has begun to evolve around her feeling of longing for home, and her affinity for the farmland where she was raised. After years of moving and academia, Laura plans to build a studio there in the foreseeable future.
Visit Laura Dirksen’s Instagram page.
Featured work
While at Archie Bray, 2024-2025
Strictly Bovine Series, 2021-2023
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 trends in popular culture, her diagnosis, and religion. A personal lexicon that riddles the frames of the metaphorical and representational large scale surrogate bovine, and mechanical bodies she illuminates. 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.
