About Austin

Born and raised in and around Salt Lake City, Austin (‘Aussie’) Hudson spent his childhood doing things that sound straight out of a young adult book series: camping out at the meerkat enclosure at the zoo, apprenticing as a magician, being temporarily banned from the Utah Museum of Natural History for arguing with the museum docent, touring Europe, learning karate, and driving cattle on horseback with old ranch hands in central Utah. He promptly burned out as a teenager, and was subsequently voted “Mr. Congeniality” by his junior high classmates and “Most Likely to Quit a Job Editing the New York Times to Instead Edit the National Enquirer” by his high school peers.

He earned a Dean’s Scholarship to Westminster College (now Westminster University), where he studied English and psychology, bought an old typewriter from a hippie out of a van, served as a supplemental instructor in quantitative research methodology, and co-founded the school’s Soup Club, eating a lot of soup in the process. Naturally creative, he took a summer job at an advertising agency, forgot about applying to graduate school, and instead spent the next decade creating things seen around the world (including, ironically, advertisements placed in The New York Times). Beyond advertising, his visual arts have appeared in an outdoor installation in his home city of South Jordan, a hanging in the Cannon House Office Building in the United States Capitol, and several solo installation shows at local museums and city halls.

Driven by an almost embarrassing need to make people happy, Austin was nominated twice for South Jordan’s Community Hero Award, eventually winning in 2017. His nonprofit work in the southwest Salt Lake Valley attracted both local and national attention, leading to a barrage of letters of encouragement from around the world, a published profile from his alma mater, multiple guest lecturer spots at local college campuses, segments on local television news outlets, and at least one YouTube video where a group of elementary school students shout “thank you” at him.

Austin is a humanist, a creator, a provocateur, a reluctant romantic, and an eccentric.