About The Artist
In the summer of 2017, Kate Young was out of work, living with her parents, and down on her luck. Striving to improve her mental health, she started to go on walks of her home town to take breaks from the grind of trying to find work in the Motion Graphics sector of DC. On one such walk, she came across a fairy garden nestled in the Condominium complex of Auburn Village. Young became obsessed, leaving the fairies there nuts, leaves, and flowers from her walk. It was coming upon Halloween and Young was contemplating breaking out her college Sculpey to make the garden Halloween decorations when her Father simply told her “You can't take over someone else's project.”
"Well," Young thought to herself "if I cant decorate their garden then I will just make my own!"
From there Fairies of Del Ray was born, a love letter to Young's hometown and childhood in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria VA. 45 had just been sworn in the year before and Young distinctly remembers the accumulation of tragedies the DMV area faced growing up in the early 2000s and how she had found comfort in fantasy, whimsy and nature as a child herself in those hard times. So between job apps, and later after work, Young would sculpt tiny doors, shops, and windows out of first polymer clay (a mistake) and then Epoxy Clay and take her walks to hide them amongst the trees and steps of her home town.
It wasn't until the beginning of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, with the addition of the Fairy Post Office where children could write the fairy post master Violet, that things started to take off. Young was once again at square one, jobless, a bit down on her luck but at least out of her parent's house. But this time her hometown had her back with her creative project, so she took a plunge to take Fairies of Del Ray out of a nonprofit public art project and into a business model to fill the need of her community asking for more.
Young strives to create one of a kind eco-friendly pockets of wonder for anyone who believes in magic. From whimsical inspired jewelry to small-batch 'Make Your Own Kits'; Young takes her love of detailed architecture, stained glass, mixed media experimental projects, and all things glow in the dark and turns them into high-quality original pieces anyone can have in there home and garden.