STUDIO FURNITURE: THE NEXT GENERATION

Opening tonight: A table is never just a table if it comes from the studio of a hotshot young designer. Consider the "World's Longest Drawing Table" (shown here), cooked up by Katie Hudnall, a recent graduate of the furniture program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Eighteen feet long, it's made from salvaged wood and incorporates a roll of old adding machine paper and a pencil. Hudnall's high-concept table, of questionable functionality, will be featured in a show of studio furniture by 15 fresh talents, all recently graduated from nine of the country's leading furniture programs. Organized by Minneapolis College of Art and Design furniture professor Dean Wilson, the show incudes novel chairs, tables, benches, shelving and cabinets that jettison traditional notions of shape and material in favor of unconventional experiments. Think of steel, polyacrylic, recycled cork and billboard vinyl. (Opening reception 6-8 p.m. today. Free. Show ends Feb. 21. One of the field's foremost designers, Wendell Castle, will discuss his elegantly sculpted wooden furniture at 6:30 p.m. next Friday. Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2501 Stevens Av. S., Mpls.612-874-3700 or www. mcad.edu.)

MARY ABBE