There Goes The Neighborhood

Ginger Che is sitting on the floor in the foyer of

her house, petting the family dog. It’s just after lunch, but she looks dolled up for a big night out in LA or some other major city. Certainly not for a visit to the Southern Shores CVS. Full makeup. Heels. Two kinds of sparkly earrings — a frosty cascade of faux diamonds on the left; a shiny, sequined flower on the right — all topped off with a floral print turban.

As one hand of long, silver fingernails strokes the Tibetan terrier’s dark gray fur, the other points out all the colorful works of art that fill her living room, which — in addition to her eye-popping jewelry — includes wildly abstract paintings, wee little barrettes, wild resin rings, and at least one window-sized dream catcher.

“I like things to be one of a kind,” she says. “I don’t like to repeat myself.”

Just peek at her hat collection. There are feathery, wild-brimmed westerns. Flapper-style cloches, circa 1920. One floppy leopard print is covered in handscripted messages, etched into the felt with burnt sage — plus a crystal strategically placed to rest on the wearer’s “third eye.”

But whether it’s a twinkling necklace or a funky fedora, they all share an approach that blends the organic and the metallic. Glamour and grit. Hippie instincts and haute couture.

“She loves Chanel as much as she loves chakras,” adds her husband, Andy Howell. “I’ve never met anyone like Ginger.”

And that’s saying something. As a legendary pro skateboarder and street artist, Andy’s rubbed shoulders with all kinds of creative geniuses across the past 35 years. He’s busted moves and branded video games with skating’s master inventor, Tony Hawk. Shared studio space with legendary graffiti artist Shepard Fairey, the proud papa of ubiquitous pop-culture imagery like Obey’s infamous “Andre the Giant” sticker and Barack Obama’s “Hope” poster.

He’s also helped launch products for some of the worlds’ biggest companies — Coca-Cola, Scion, Xbox — and pioneered game-changing digital tech, from customized shoes to makeup that matches different skin tones. All without losing his boardsports street cred — he’s got a line of DC snow gear arriving this fall — or his trademark mohawk.

“I guess one project just leads to the next, so I don’t get stuck doing the same thing,” Andy explains. “And as an artist, I’m always looking to see what’s missing. Because creativity isn’t supposed to be comfortable. You’re supposed to stretch and grow.”

That same inventive drive pulses through the whole Che-Howell family. Their 14-year-old son, True, can write music, draw anime-inspired portraits with a zombie twist, or edit montage videos of his gaming exploits. His 12-year-old sister, Love, makes homemade slime dishes that look like real food — butter-topped pancakes, lattice crust apple pies — then films herself squishing the results back into a pile of primordial ooze. Both upload their works to Twitch pages and YouTube channels with still more dramatic flair.

It’s like an artistic Addams Family: just when you think you’ve met the craziest example, a hand pops out covered in goo.

So, what gives? Is it nature? Nurture? Both?

“The people we are surrounded by influence us tremendously,” muses Ginger. “But, then there is the

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drive of your soul. It’s just there. Nobody told you or taught you. You have a voice, a wish. And I think that comes with birth into this world.”

You can find support for both theories in this very house. Ginger grew up in Taipei watching her mom sew clothes for Chinese celebrities — then filled shoeboxes with dresses for her own paper dolls. As a little girl, she moved to Germany — the home of “abstract expressionism” — a term she learned later while attending UC San Diego and studying under the likes of Faith Ringgold, Barbara Kruger and Elanor Antin.

Ginger made bold works in everything from portraits to sculpture, but upon graduation found it was her fashion sense that struck a chord — ultimately, she opened a successful boutique in San Diego’s posh coastal town of La Jolla.

“I had a few art shows in museums and galleries,” she recalls. “People were more interested in the jewelry I’d made for myself, so I started making things for friends. And then the store. But just like my paintings or my sculptures, I like to mess with the conventional ideas and bring together unexpected fabrics or objects. And I use those things that are surrounding me to express what I’m feeling.”

Andy? His dad was a respectable Virginia Beach dentist. Mom was a favorite first grade teacher at a local private school. But Andy had a different set of ideas and talents. By fifth grade, he was winning state-wide art competitions. As an adolescent, he began building and shredding backyard ramps among the burgeoning VB skate scene. By the time he hit high school he was already mashing the two passions together, using the heat from his desk lamp to screen-print skulls and such onto t-shirts for skate buddies and punk bands.

One day, in 11th grade, he heard about art school and graphic design. He went home and told his parents that he wanted to be both a pro skateboarder and a professional artist — and quickly ended up in a psychiatrist’s office.

“You have to remember that those paths in art and skateboarding were uncharted territory that couldn’t amount to anything in the older generation’s minds,” Andy says. “But luckily, the doctor said, ‘Your son is one of those rare people who has a vision of what he wants to do at a young age. Let him follow the path that he wants to go on.’ And that changed my whole life.”

In 1986, Andy went off to the Atlanta School of Design. Two years later, he was skating professionally for Schmitt Stix. But by the early 90s, the old-school brands felt out of step. When his sponsors wouldn’t let the team design their own graphics, a core crew rebelled to form New Deal Skateboards, where Andy’s streetwise graffiti fonts and characters immediately began gripping young minds.

“We were the number three company within a few months, because we answered the call of what was missing for all the kids getting into street skating at that time,” Andy remembers. “And skateboarding is all about being unique. When you step on your board and go outside, it’s like, ‘What are you going to create on your skateboard that day?’”

And thus began a lifelong pattern of sensing gaps in the market — then launching clear over them to the next big thing.

When he felt skateboarding still wasn’t fully reflecting the culture’s growing urban appeal, he started a streetwear brand called Underground Element. (That later became the boardsports giant, Element.) When Corporate America came sniffing around skate, surf and snow in the late 90s, he and a partner formed an ad agency called Imagewerks to help major companies crack the market, working with brands from Activision to Converse, Levi’s to McDonald’s.

“We made a whole Happy Meal collector series of ramps and finger boards using a lot of my early graffiti designs,” Andy laughs. “That one did 73 million units in six weeks.”

Before long, working in boardsports was just one of his many tricks. In the early 2000s, he tapped his connections with auction houses and museums to help a burgeoning tech company curate art works from across a spectrum of creators, so they could customize everything from shoes to bikes. By 2012, that company was called Zazzle, and Howell’s ArtProjekt channel had 1500 contributors that linked consumers with street artists, comic book illustrators, fashion designers and rock stars. Kids could put a George Clinton painting on a mountain bike — moms could add a Marvel hero to their messenger bag.

“Basically, we curated the best of the best artists and gave them each a store,” Andy explains. “So, the artists weren’t making the products, but they were extending their product range. And the companies could reach new markets and then make those custom products to order. Today, they call it ‘drop shipping.’ But from there, I got really deep into the idea of customization and personalization”

So, once more, Andy took a radical leap. In 2012 he and his tech guru from ArtsProjekt split off and began chasing the concept of personalized makeup. They met with giants of the beauty industry. (Sephora, Estee Lauder, etc.) Sat down titans of Silicon Valley (Amazon, Apple, etc.) Ultimately, they created a phone app that matched a person’s skin tone just by taking a photo, then sent the formula to the factory, where a specialized printer mixed the perfect hue of foundation, spat it into a bottle, and shipped it out within 24 hours.

“That was the biggest challenge of all,” Andy says. “But once we did it, it blew up. We got hundreds of thousands of downloads in the first month.”

In 2017, their company, MATCHco, was bought by Shiseido, Japan’s leading luxury skincare brand.

Through it all, Andy always kept a sneaker in the boardsports world. In 2005, he went to Vegas’s Magic tradeshow to promote Hawk shoes. Meanwhile, Ginger was shopping new lines for the boutique. They met, hung out for six hours — and were married within seven weeks.

They’ve been together ever since, moving from So Cal to San Francisco and back again. By 2019, Ginger and Andy were raising the two kids in the Malibu hills. They seemed to have it all — until a week or so before Christmas, when an electrical fire burned it all to the ground.

“In an instant we lost everything,” says Ginger. “The children’s toys, photos, memories. We had nothing. Only the clothes on our backs. It’s hard to imagine. It’s like waking up in a nightmare.”

Among the casualties were hundreds of art pieces Andy had collected by bartering with colleagues, including paintings by street artists like Fairey and David Choe — not to mention works

by the likes of Banksy and Andy Warhol. It was all supposed to be the basis for his next big dream: a street art museum. Now it was ash.

“It was absolutely devastating,” Andy says. “But it was also an opportunity for a reset.”

That reset was a reconnection to his youth. His roots. Which happened to run straight back to the Outer Banks.

Like many VBers, Andy’s family had a beach cottage here. He spent his summers in Kitty Hawk, racking up timeless childhood memories. Running a tab at Wink’s. Riding waves and exploring nature. Driving on the Hatteras beaches and working the CB in his dad’s Jeep CJ-5.

“My dad’s handle was ‘the Kitty Hawk Kid,’” Andy says. “That’s always been in the back of my mind, and, in a sense, calling me back.”

So, last February, Andy and Ginger decided to move east while they figured out what to do back west. They moved into Andy’s mom’s Kitty Hawk cottage — right across from where he used to help commercial fishermen pick the bycatch from their nets. The family spent the first winter stock-piling seashells and other flotsam. Come summer, they were camping in Ocracoke. Andy fell back into surfing and fishing like never before, and rediscovered a sense of community he hadn’t felt since he was in high school.

“Here, you’re connected to people,” he explains. “People you meet on the beach one day remember your name the next. Kids can ride bikes around the neighborhood. Back in California, that stuff literally didn’t exist.”

And with that, “Let’s post up while we rebuild” became, “Let’s stay right here.” They bought a house and began meeting neighbors and began settling in. Even Ginger, who’s spent most of her life in bustling cities, found herself smitten by the slower pace — and open space.

“This place is so beautiful,” she says. “It’s coming in very handy because nature is the biggest inspiration. And there’s less noise, so you can hear your inner artist.”

A year later, the whole family’s inner artist is bursting with energy to create something new. For Ginger, that means opening her first boutique in more than a decade — Love Shack OBX — where she offers a mix of standalone jewelry and fashion designs, along with some small production clothing that captures the same sparkle and spirit.

“I like to combine the things I love about nature with the city, with people, and with human expression,” she says. “So, everything I love about the planet is right here.”

For Andy, after years creating whole companies, he’s back at his desk kicking out logos and graphics for t-shirts and stickers. Some of it’s for the boutique, but he’s also digging into a whole new brand. One that channels an old-school indie feel for his favorite stomping grounds. A culture he feels is as unique and compelling as any big city, yet remains underrepresented.

“After traveling all over the world and living in California, I came back here and was like, ‘This is one of the coolest places ever,” Andy says. “And it was the epicenter for me, for everything I love about surfing, fishing, wildlife, nature. All that stuff I grew up on. And I thought, ‘What if there was a brand that came from here?’ One that was focused on how rad and underground and gnarly it is?”

Already GHOST SHIP Supply is cranking out killer designs that channel skater-graphics with a coastal feel. Eventually, he wants to bring in other Outer Banks artists to submit designs — and possibly even surfboard shapers and fishing rod builders for a foray into hard goods. But rather than manufacturing on a massive scale, he plans to mix online sales with a rolling trailer to do pop-up events, rolling up on unexpected situations like a sloop rising out of the mist.

“There’s so many possibilities here,” he says. “I feel like you can do anything you want against this backdrop that’s beautiful, mysterious, wild, and free. But mainly, I just want to make stuff and collaborate. I’m not looking to take over the world.”

No. But if you are looking for the next business mogul, look to Love. She’s already selling pint-sized slime ice creams in the Love Shack and online. But her mint chocolate scoops aren’t the only creations that look and feel like the real thing. Her whole product line comes with a compelling logo and a whole lot of brand identity and market awareness. All at age 12.

“My company is called ‘Moshii — with two ‘I’s,’ Love explains. “Moshi is Japanese for ice cream, but we added an ‘I’ because the logo has two eyes. And my slime shop is different, because I don’t use borax. I use contact lens solution and baking soda. It’s better for your hands.”

True? He’s segued from songwriting and zombie art into video editing. His YouTube Channel is a mosh pit of first-person gaming exploits with cool soundtracks and pop-culture send-ups, where he visually modifies cartoons like “Peppa The Pig,” like a digital graffiti artist tagging some cheesy public display. And he taught himself how to do it all.

“I saw people posting some of the games I played and thought it would be cool to learn,” he explains. “And my dad has all the Adobe stuff, so I asked if I could use After Effects and Premiere Pro, then I watched some videos on how to do it. Right now, it’s still a hobby but I’m trying to get better.”

Meanwhile, the whole family is embracing their new home in all its artistic forms. Andy recently collaborated with local artists, James Perry and Dawn Moraga, on a mural outside Ashley’s Espresso Parlor. And all four submitted pieces to the Dare County Arts Council’s long-running Frank Stick Memorial Art Show.

True’s “Ecstatic Cactus” is an anthropomorphic succulent, sporting rosy blooms and a big smile. Love’s is an other-worldly girl floating in stars that looks like an airbrush yet is entirely digital. Ginger’s is — quintessentially — an abstract swirl of color and sparkle on a piece of natural wood. While Andy’s is a street-art inspired stencil of the Hatteras lighthouse.

None of it looks like anything else in the room, but, then again, neither do they. So, if you’re looking for this family to full-on assimilate, think again. Andy’s gonna keep rocking his braided ponytail mohawk. Ginger’s gonna still look just as dolledup at mid-day. Wanchese slippers won’t be sitting in either kid’s closet any time soon. But it’s that sincere sense of self — that fierce individualism — that makes them fit in.

“I’m drawn to things that have authenticity,” says Ginger. “That’s why I love it here. Because people are truly themselves. That’s the most attractive thing ever — and the most inspiring, too. We come in all kinds of shapes and forms, we have different ideas and expressions. And that’s what makes life interesting.”