Austin Coudriet: Building Big
Austin Coudriet: Building Big
For the past two years, Austin Coudriet’s calendar has been marked with engagements, each month sending him to a different country or US state to present his furniture-making workshops. Coudriet is not a woodworker – he is a ceramic artist – and his large ceramic pieces include chairs, tables, lamps, and sculptural pieces. This young builder who was named the 2024 Emerging Artist by Ceramics Monthly magazine and the received the 2025 Emerging Artist Award by NCECA has caught the attention of the ceramics world and has ignited interest in big clay pieces. While Coudriet’s pieces stand out, it is the community behind the work that motivates this artist not only to build big, but to think, plan, and dream big.
A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Coudriet recalls a youth infused with the idea of making. “My father is an architect,” he recalls, “and from the earliest age, I was surrounded and intrigued by blueprints. I was fascinated by how my father built with lines.” His dad included him in woodwork projects and Coudriet acquired skills. At the same time, he found school subjects challenging and was diagnosed with a learning disability. He says, “When it came time to think about college, I wanted to do what I was best at – building things.” He was accepted into the art program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and began a major in Sculpture and Woodworking.
While still a freshman, Coudriet had an experience that clarified his direction. He recalls, “I was in the sculpture department, alone, very late one night, working on a project, and I happened to walk by the ceramic studio. The room was filled with at least twenty people.” Coudriet sensed the energy. “It was then I knew I was in the wrong department” he says. “The materiality of the medium, the aspect of solving a puzzle, the communal approach to problem solving and invitation – it’s almost like a game.” He immediately changed direction and became a ceramics major. “I wanted to get good at this, even though I was inherently bad!” he says.
After making a lot of pottery, Coudriet’s creative impulse began to emerge. Reaching back to his father’s influence, he began to start making sculpture, each piece with a drawing, laying out the lines that would take on a third dimension in clay. He found himself gravitating toward larger pieces. “For me,” he says, “they didn’t feel large. In my experience, a house is a large piece. I just had a different perspective. Because it was a different medium, it felt large.” He says he was also influenced by the work and mentorship of the group of students in the graduate program, who were doing a lot of larger pieces. Coudriet says he became “totally obsessed” with making and sensed that his artistic voice was beginning to come through.
As Coudriet worked on his senior thesis project, he applied for programs throughout the United States. In 2019, he moved to New York to begin a two-year residency at Clay Art Center. Despite the disruption of the COVID pandemic and a six-month return to Nebraska for remote work, the residency fueled Coudriet’s passion for his work. “The community at The Clay Art Center kept me going, at times even more so than the medium,” he explains. “The community keeps me engaged in the field.” He says that the New York experience opened his eyes to a larger milieu and spurred him to dream further. His goal was to get to the renowned Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. “I applied to every program in and near Montana and was accepted for a residency at the Clay Studio of Missoula.
The western experience transformed Coudriet. He found a culture there that was rooted in community, much like what he had found in the clay studio. He made a point to travel the two hours to Helena for events and shows at Archie Bray and began to know some of the artists there. After his residency in Missoula, He was accepted as a long-term Archie Bray resident artist, and he was awarded the Frazza Fellowship in 2023. His dream realized, he moved to Helena.
Coudriet speaks of the inspiration of the western landscape. “There is something of the old cowboy magic,” he says. It’s in the vastness of the geography. It’s in the life of the people. It’s not an easy place to live. People have decided to live there – they choose to be there. There is always something to be seen or explored.” He says that a new period of exploration opened for him with the move west, first to Missoula and then to Helena. While in Missoula, he met a fellow ceramic artist, Sarah Anderson, who would become significant in his life. In Helena, he found the college-town atmosphere and the presence of young energy to be stimulating. “People are always doing something – going on a hike, a river expedition, skiing,” he marvels. “The prominence of the rivers underscores this electricity of life.”
The renewal of Coudriet’s fellowship for 2024 brought with it the stressful realization of the looming future as an independent artist. “I wanted to try to avoid the fallout of that hard reality,” he says, when no one is presenting opportunities and showing your work.” Coudriet had become known for his large furniture pieces and was fortunate to be asked to present a workshop at the American Museum of Ceramic Arts in Pamona, California. The interest was overwhelming, with 65 people on the waiting list for the class. Thus began months of travel and workshops for Coudriet. He was in a good place professionally, but he began to sense a need for a different kind of life.
By this time, his relationship with Anderson was firm and the couple did a lot of talking about their dreams to have their own studio. In his travels, Coudriet had seen countless studios and began to zero in on what his own would look like. Anderson, too, with her extensive experience in clay communities and teaching, had strong ideas of what she would like to see in a future joint studio. Together, they came up with a blueprint for what they wanted to achieve. Primary to their plan would be a strong clay community, built by classes, memberships, and residencies. Each wanted to develop a strong Art Therapy program. The link between Coudriet’s learning disabilities and his gravitation to the arts fed his desire to offer this opportunity to others. Anderson’s history of health problems correlated with this leaning.
As 2025 approaches 2026, the couple are well on their way to realizing their dream. They settled on Anderson’s hometown of Indianapolis for their studio, Dusty Pants Studio. They are in the process of closing on an historic bank building in the Irving neighborhood of Indiana’s capital. The blueprint for the space includes classrooms and member spaces, all at the ready to build the essential community that drives Coudriet’s work. They have developed plans for one-, three-, and five-year goals and are securing investors. They plan to have a booth at the 2026 NCECA conference. Coudriet’s dad has been recruited for overseeing the renovations, which are extensive. They hope to open the studio in 2026, followed by the residency program and the art therapy program the following year.
Dusty Pants Studio is a big thing to build. When asked how he plans to maintain his work on his big clay pieces while managing a business, Coudriet admits there will have to be some changes. “I find myself scaling back a bit,” he says, “focusing on smaller pieces.” He says that he has built up a large supply of pieces to sell and exhibit over the transition. Throughout his career, Coudriet has produced smaller, sculptural works along with his big furniture pieces. He ponders that these pieces came at times of transition – a move, an ended relationship – and suggests that they encapsulate moments in time. “I can make a small piece relatively quickly,” he explains, “so in that sense, they are more linear – something I was trying to enter into and express.” He says the big pieces come when he is in a stable place, when he has the time to immerse himself in the making, much like his father’s long process of designing and building a stable structure or home. We can expect to see evidence of that stability in Coudriet’s work as Dusty Pants Studio becomes a real, live-giving community.
Learn more at www.austincoudriet.com and www.dustypantsstudio.com