Featured Student Member: Corey Wellik
Corey graduated from the University of Michigan in 2017 with a degree in Plant and Soil Ecology, and joined theWoodworking and Furniture Design Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the Fall of 2024. They root their practice in a deep connection to the land, and have spent the last 7 years teaching, learning, playing with wood, growing food, and growing community in Detroit. They use wood and wooden furniture to create experiences of community- and self-belonging, resilience, and liberation. They build work inspired by our collective connection to land and place.
In Corey’s words: “Woodworking allows me to take inspiration from the inherent queerness of tree shapes and wood grain to queer traditional furniture design expectations and to tell the relatednarratives of land and queer liberation. And, as a queer and transgender person, in doing so I am challenging the dominant narrative of linear conformity both in the body that builds fine furniture and in the form itself.”
