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MUSEUM FOR ART IN WOOD PRESENTS KATIE HUDNALL: THE LONGEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS, FEATURING IMAGINATIVE STRUCTURES CREATED FROM SALVAGED WOOD
Katie Hudnall’s first museum-organized solo exhibition features a series of absurd sculptural works and a large-scale, interactive installation made from salvaged wood
Photos: HERE
Philadelphia, PA | February XX, 2025 – On March 7, the Museum for Art in Wood (141 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106) presents Katie Hudnall: The Longest Distance between Two Points. In the first museum-organized solo presentation of her unique and captivating work, Katie Hudnall uses salvaged wood to create a series of sculptures and a large-scale interactive installation that captures her eye for the uncanny and absurdly mechanical. The Longest Distance between Two Points is curated by the Museum for Art in Wood’s Executive Director and Chief Curator Jennifer-Navva Milliken and is on display in the Museum’s gallery from March 7, 2025, to July 20, 2025.
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Hudnall constructs intricate furniture-adjacent objects from discarded wood, emphasizing visible connections and material quirks as part of the design. These fragile and precarious creations explore themes of human relationships, resilience, and finding hope in their seemingly improbable functionality. Hudnall leans into the individualities and irregularities of the salvaged wood she selects for her work, viewing the scars, stains, or other blemishes as a part of the material’s history and place of origin. She uses these characteristics as an opportunity to examine the beauty of imperfection, activating her imagination to painstakingly craft sculptures embracing the wood’s unique traits.
The Longest Distance between Two Points represents Hudnall’s most ambitious work yet. Most of the exhibition’s works revolve around the concept of “Libraries of Things,” with each sculpture keeping secret objects of uncertain value. The objects and materials used in her exhibition were collected during various walks through cities in which Hudnall has lived or worked, including Philadelphia, Madison, Indianapolis, and Richmond, Virginia. Her interactive installation “A Cabinet for Lost and Found Things” centers on a monumental cabinet for storing treasures, with each item carefully arranged by the artist in individual drawers. Hudnall’s idiosyncratic take on the traditional German cabinet of curiosities—known as Wünderkammer—was made with reverence for the eccentric collector in all of us.
“Cabinet” is no mere piece of storage furniture, however. Each drawer is connected to a lever mounted on the wall through the complex web of strings and pulleys arranged above like a massive loom. Any time a drawer is opened to reveal its contents, a connected lever is pulled downwards in response, revealing a watchful eye. “Cabinet” highlights Hudnall’s delight in the “inefficient beauty of roundabout function” as actions traverse meandering paths from gesture to outcome. Additionally, it serves as a tribute to Philadelphia and the pathways, routes, and industrial architecture that make up the city. In the artist’s imagination, lives and experiences can cross paths by traversing these routes without ever actually meeting. Through “Cabinet,” Hudnall envisions a way for these everyday strangers to meet and embeds those connections in this call-and-response installation.
The exhibition continues with a new series, comprising several large yet delicate, zoomorphic sculptures that continue Hudnall’s fascination with teetering, “furniture-ish” objects. Visitors will immediately notice “The Let Goer,” a towering 10-foot-tall sculpture, and its companion “The Blower,” a cantilevered 11-foot-long piece. Both are constructed with reclaimed redwood and demonstrate Hudnall’s fine woodworking skill. The series also features “The Herd,” a colony of spindly creatures that each offer different interactive elements to engage the viewer upon closer inspection. The series was created by Hudnall while she was participating in the Corsicana Artist & Writer Residency program in North Texas. The residency was hosted in a building featuring large studios with high ceilings, providing Hudnall with the space to experiment and make some of the most ambitiously scaled sculptures she’s ever created.
In addition to these new works, The Longest Distance between Two Points includes illustrations by Hudnall, who sees her woodworking and drawing work as part of the same practice. In her words, “I make woodwork like an illustrator.” The inclusion of drawings displayed alongside her distinctive wood sculptures emphasize her distinctive hand, inviting visitors even deeper into Hudnall’s intensely imaginative inner world.
“Katie Hudnall’s work is so unique in aesthetic and expression that it is immediately identifiable as her own,” said Jennifer-Navva Milliken. “She has built a devoted following through her empathetic, furniture-ish sculpture. It is with honor and delight that the Museum for Art in Wood presents her recent works in this first museum solo presentation. Her sensitivity to her salvage material and its provenance, which take on agency and character through her attentive labor and attention to detail, is on full view in these larger-than-life creatures. The Longest Distance between Two Points invites visitors to think about the beings that thrive in their imaginations and the potential of bringing them to life through disciplined artistic practice.”
Katie Hudnall received a BFA in Sculpture from the Corcoran College of Art & Design and an MFA in Furniture Design/Woodworking from Virginia Commonwealth University. Hudnall’s distinctive work is held in public and private collections and has been presented in exhibitions throughout the United States, including the Museum for Art in Wood’s 2019 exhibition, Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking. She was a 2016 artist fellow in the Museum’s Windgate International Turning Exchange residency and a 2022 documentary artist fellow in the Windgate Arts Residency Program in Wood (WARP Wood). Hudnall’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications, including Crafting A Continuum and American Craft Magazine. She currently leads the Woodworking and Furniture Program at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, and creates imaginative tools addressing both real and hypothetical problems.
Major support for Katie Hudnall: The Longest Distance between Two Points is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Research and residency support for the artist was generously provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the School of Education’s Department of Art.
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About the Museum for Art in Wood:
The Museum for Art in Wood is the international leader for contemporary art and creativity in the material of wood. The Museum engages, educates, and inspires the public through the exhibition, collection, and interpretation of contemporary art in wood. Founded in 1986 and sited in Philadelphia, the Museum for Art in Wood serves a local and international community. It has built its reputation by providing opportunities for makers and visitors to experience craft directly, through participatory programming; seminal exhibitions and documentation; and the growth, conservation, exhibition, and care of its permanent
collection. The Museum’s practice of keeping these resources free and available to the public emphasizes its commitment to building a democratic and inclusive community. Visit museumforartinwood.org to learn more.