Sara Deren is a ceramic artist born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. Having graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with her BFA in Ceramics in 2023, she moved to Port Angeles in 2025 for her first post-grad opportunity, the Artist in Residence program at Peninsula College. Through Peninsula College’s Community Education program, she teaches community wheel throwing classes.

While Sara was first introduced to clay in high school through wheel throwing and has found a love for teaching these skills, she finds methods of hand building to be most successful and intuitive in her own practice. Using techniques of coil building, slab building, and pinching, she creates both utilitarian forms and sculpture. Through additive and subtractive methods, the surfaces of these forms are textured to reflect the natural world around us. She hopes that people find joy in using and handling her work, just as she found joy in the process of making it.