The UW Wood­work­ing and Furni­ture program has a long and remark­able history. Skip Johnson ran the program for decades until Tom Loeser took it over in 1991 and ran it until 2020. Katie Hudnall is an asso­ciate profes­sor at UW Madison, and is the current head of the program.

The under­grad­u­ate program is centered around wood­work­ing processes and a beau­ti­ful, fully-equipped wood­work­ing shop. Assign­ments are open-ended enough to allow students to explore and learn new tech­niques whether they’re focused on the sculp­tural or more furni­tural aspects of their designs. We empha­size unique designs and exper­i­men­ta­tion with the mate­r­ial in equal measure to appropriate craft.

The three-year, fully-funded MFA program is part of a dynamic, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary program across the Art Depart­ment, and our grads are encour­aged to take classes in and out of the wood area, as well as semi­nars, history and theory classes, and classes from outside the Department.

Our alumni have done and continue to do amazing things! Some of our grads include Bill Hammer­s­ley, Matthias Pliess­nigg, Ted Lott, Hayami Arakawa, BA Harring­ton, Don Miller, Maggie Sasso – there are too many to name! 

Recent Visit­ing Artists include Yuri Kobayashi, Norman Teague, Vivian Chiu, Phoebe Kuo, Erika Diamond and Shae Bishop.

Find us on Insta­gram at @wood_sconsin
You can also see some of the hijinx at @katiehudnall.

Katie Hudnall is the faculty for this program and teaches all of the classes, though recent instruc­tors include Sarah Reagan and Tom Lees. 

Current grad­u­ates are Emma Senft, Teresa Audet, Kate David­son and Sam North­cut. Each brings a unique back­ground in wood­work­ing and remark­able research to the program. Here’s a wonder­ful link to a review of Teresa Audet’s MFA Thesis exhi­bi­tion: https://​badat​sports​.com/​2​023/s…

https://​art​.wisc​.edu/​m​e​d​i​a-dis…