THE ILLUSTRATOR:  KATIE RUNDE


KATIERUNDE.COM

Katie holds a baby goat on the set of WFSB Channel 3's

"Better Connecticut" to introduce Wilhelmina Goes Wandering on April 1, 2014.

Katie explains why she took on the project of illustrating Wilhelmina Goes Wandering.

Katie Runde has been drawing ever since she could hold a crayon, marker, or pencil in hand. From drawing long, meandering snakes--‘getting her snakes out’--at the age of three, to the present day, art has always been not only present, but necessary.


Katie fulfilled her lifelong ambition of having her own art exhibit at the age of fourteen, when she was the youngest artist ever accepted by a blind jury into the Corn Hill Arts Festival in Rochester, New York.


From here, she turned to music, attending the Eastman School of Music in 2003 for classical saxophone performance--and finding herself in demand for designing classmates’ recital posters as well. She double-majored in folklore, ethnography, and music at University College Cork in Ireland, and played and recorded for several rock and funk bands in Cork between 2006 and 2009.


All the while, she designed publicity materials for her band, accepted portrait commissions, and played with a budding interest in street art. In 2009, she moved back to the United States to undertake her graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and spent the summer heaving hay and milking cows at Blythedale Farm in Cornish, Vermont.


By the time she got to Chicago, the fresh air, mountains, and cows of Vermont had softened her zeal for academia, and she completed her Master of Arts in Religious Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School the following spring so that she could return to Vermont in the summer.


There she taught first and second grades and middle school art at Wellspring Waldorf School in Tunbridge, moonlighting in the Boston-based rock group The Van Burens, and playing clarinet and saxophone for orchestras from the South Royalton Town Band to The Temptations.


The year after she graduated with her Waldorf Elementary Teacher Certification from the Sunbridge Institute in Chestnut Ridge, New York, the pull of the arts finally won over completely, and Katie committed herself to full-time work in art and music.


Her work has since appeared at the Upstream Gallery in Dobbs Ferry, New York; ArtisTree Gallery in Woodstock, Vermont; won a “Viewer’s Choice Award” at the Chandler Gallery in Randolph, Vermont; and her giant 3-D chalk drawings have graced the entryways of the Davis Center and the Royal Tyler Theatre at the University of Vermont in Burlington.


Katie’s carefully rendered graphite and colored pencil drawing has developed through the years into a celebration of the personalities and presence of the people and animals she draws. She delights in color and the tricks that can be played with it, and brings depth to her work by layering colors, often in unexpected combinations.

Katie discusses her illustrations for Wilhelmina Goes Wandering during the opening of an art exhibit titled "Animal Power" at the Flynn Center for Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont.

Wilhelmina Goes Wandering is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram


English ISBN: 978-1-62890-258-7

French ISBN: 978-1-63443-453-9

Mandarin ISBN: 978-1-64970-860-1

Spanish ISBN: 979-8-88722-012-3

hardcover, 8.5” x 8.5” | 42 pages

18 original full-color illustrations

$23/English | $23/French, Mandarin, Spanish | $3.95/Audible digital audiobook (English)