creators of N.C

her studio; her designs are also printed on everything from fabric to wallpaper by Spoonflower, a global marketplace based in Durham that manufactures textiles, connecting artists directly to consumers with no overhead costs for the artists.

The family moved south from Ohio to Durham five years ago, when Sean took a job running operations for a firm that services solar farms.

“The move was a chance to get back closer to family,” Katie says, “but my daughter was 4 1/2 at the time, and when we moved it was really hard for her. She had a newborn baby brother. We had lived in a great neighborhood in Ohio, and she’d had tons of friends at a great school, and she was uprooted.”

Katie started creating images at night. “When she would go to bed, I would make her these coloring pages, where I would illustrate different native Southeastern flora and fauna. During the day I would have my hands full with the baby, but I would whisper to her, ‘Pssst, I made you some new coloring pages. These are passion flowers. They grow wild here and look like jungle plants.’”

For a long time, Katie resisted doing art professionally. “I always saw the art world as something really exclusive,” she adds. “It wasn’t for redneck girls from Cullowhee.” But moving to Ohio made her reconsider the role art could play in her life, and the lives of people both inside and outside the region.

“When I moved to Oberlin, people always had all these misconceptions about North Carolina and the South; it’s either Gone with the Wind or Duck Dynasty. Neither of those are authentic to my experience,” she says. This, combined with her connecting her daughter to her new home via images of the Southern landscape, inspired Katie to develop a library of images, eventually culminating in New South Pattern House.

“As parents we’re always trying to curate the best parts of our childhood,” she says. “That’s how I think of my Southern identity with my kids and, frankly, my business. What parts do I want to highlight? We have this incredibly rich biodiversity. We have beautiful, vibrant cities. What are the parts we want to move away from? When people think of Southerners, do I want them to think of the Confederate flag? No, not for me. I want them to think of coneflowers.” SP

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at UNC Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.

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