Laura Van Duren
Artist Statement
Laura Van Duren’s work navigates the complexities of support systems that can feel unsteady, even as they are being built back up through collective persistence. Through chairs and sculptural forms, the work examines the interwoven issues of how necessary resilience and community support is amid our shifting political reality.
Swollen ceramic pieces stride forward, precariously balanced on wheels, nozzles, and cobbled-together chairs, illustrating a narrative of collective effort and adaptive repair.
This pieced-together community becomes both vulnerable and resilient, emphasizing that real stability and shelter are created not alone, but through interconnected acts of care, ingenuity, and shared endurance. The installation considers how support is made—and remade—together.
ARTIST BIO
Laura Van Duren is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California,recognized for her innovative approach to ceramics and mixed-media sculpture. Her practice often merges drawing, ceramics, glycerin soap, and recycled materials, reflecting a commitment to experimentation and abstraction. She works with the Peter Voulkos family helping to manage the archival aspect of his collection which has had a profound influence on her creative process.
Van Duren’s work has been exhibited at major institutions across the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Crocker Museum (as part of the feminist exhibition Making Moves), Sonoma Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, and Berkeley Art Center. She is dedicated to arts education, teaching ceramics and sculpture as an adjunct professor at several community colleges. Her achievements in the field include residencies, such as the Open Studio residency at Haystack in Maine (2023) and a 2025 residency at Dream Farm Commons Gallery in Oakland. Notably, her work has been acquired by The Crocker Art Museum.
Van Duren holds a BFA in drawing from Carnegie Mellon University and she completed her MFA in sculpture at San Francisco State University in 2017.
