UW–Madison’s Katie Hudnall, associate professor in the School of Education’s Art Department, is featured in the fall 2025 issue of On Wisconsin magazine.
The article, headlined “From Trash Can to Treasure,” spotlights Hudnall’s distinctive practice of creating sculptural furniture pieces from found wood. Her work often resembles utilitarian objects like boxes or furniture but functions in unexpected ways — incorporating drawers, doors, or moving parts that encourage viewer interaction.
Hudnall explains that her pieces aim to invite viewers to pause and take notice of simple moments. For instance, one of her works is an 11-foot-tall wooden structure with a pincer mechanism at the top that drops a maple seed, allowing it to spin gently to the ground. This sculpture, Hudnall says, “is trying to get people to recognize the value in stopping for two or three seconds and just enjoying the movement of this seed, this brilliant evolutionary tool.”
Since joining the UW–Madison faculty in 2020, Hudnall has led the School of Education’s woodworking and furniture program, which is nationally recognized for its strength in craft and design. She begins many of her courses with assignments like “Not a Spoon,” encouraging students to reimagine functional objects like wooden tableware.
Hudnall’s current exhibition, “The Longest Distance between Two Points,” is on view at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. She also got a shoutout in a recent New York Times article about the increasing prominence of women in woodworking. In On Wisconsin, she cites influences ranging from illustrators Shel Silverstein and Edward Gorey to the contraptions of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”
Hudnall works exclusively with reclaimed materials, salvaging wood from dumpsters, curbs, and construction sites for her creations. “I love knowing that if I walk past a trash can, and it’s got a bunch of wood sticking out of it, I could rescue that material from the garbage stream and turn it into something beautiful,” she says.
Read the full On Wisconsin feature to learn more about Hudnall’s sculptural practice.