Touartist

Katie Touart has worked in many media as an artist and designer. Her greeting card and textile designs have sold at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Harvard University Art Museums, The National Cathedral Shop, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus among others. The more than 70 window displays she created for Herend Porcelain, with their witty props and playful painted backdrops won her a huge following. But more importantly, work on that “small stage” provided the perfect training ground for the work on a “real stage” that would follow.

The journey that would eventually lead to an MFA in Costume Design from Yale University began when Katie co-founded a school-based children’s theatre program inspired by her own formative childhood theatre experiences. After three years of designing costumes for those productions, Katie began designing for professional children’s theatres and working as a teaching artist with the Kennedy Center and with public and private schools in the metro Washington DC area.

By 2016, her work had garnered five Helen Hayes Award nominations for Outstanding Productions-TYA, an Outstanding Costume Design, Resident Production nomination (2014 for Peter Pan and Wendy) and the 2016 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Production-TYA ( Wiley and the Hairy Man at Imagination Stage in Bethesda, MD).

Katie’s designs for dance include multiple collaborations with Step Afrika! for their Symphony in Step, Holiday Step Shows in 2013 and 2014, Green is the New Black, and Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker with The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

In 2015, Katie was awarded the one, year-long “Special Student” spot in the MFA Design Program at Yale School of Drama and ended by completing the full degree program in 2018.  Katie costumed four mounted productions at Yale, including Native Son at Yale Rep, and three Yale School of Drama productions.

Katie currently teaches Costume Design and Construction at the Boston Arts Academy in Boston, MA alongside her other design work.