The wood/furniture area at UW-Madison offers beginning and advanced classes for undergraduate and graduate students which explore the technical and conceptual possibilities of woodworking and furniture design. The class curriculum is project-based and teaches a full range of skills from design development through drawing and model building as well as hand and machine based construction skills. The
area also offers a graduate level program with 5-7 students specializing in wood or furniture while pursuing the 2 year MA or the 3 year MFA degree in fine art. Graduate students receive a work space in one of two private bench rooms attached to the machine room and have 24-hour access to the studio facility. The graduate program stresses advanced visual research and is highly flexible. Graduate students produce both functional and non-functional work that represents a wide spectrum of aesthetic perspectives. The context of a very large and diverse research university allows us to effectively support and mentor varied and wide-ranging approaches to art making. We actively encourage experimentation and collaboration with other areas of the art department and the larger university. The wood/furniture facilities offer a state-of-the-art laboratory for working with wood. However we promote and endorse a far-reaching exploration of both traditional and cutting edge materials, as well as newer digitally driven approaches to design and fabrication. Graduate studio research includes extensive one-on-one interaction with faculty from all areas of the art department. Additional feedback is provided through group critiques by faculty, fellow students, guest critics, and visiting artists.
