Wake County is welcoming its first ever "Visiting Artist" this year as a way to enhance the quality of life in the region. Costume designer Kahei "Ketti" Shum McRae will be in the area for the next year lending her expertise to local theaters and spending time with students at Wake County schools.
"It's very exciting. It will be a lot of plays, workshops, presentations, exhibitions and education," McRae said.
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She has an MFA in costume design and a bachelor's degree in production design in filmmaking from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. McRae draws most of her designs on a tablet these days and has a long history of bringing her ideas to life on the stage.
"We draw. We design. We do research a lot on the period and on the piece," she said.
The Visiting Artist program was the idea of Wake County Commissioner Matt Calabria who was looking for a way to expand the arts culture in Wake County.
"I started researching it online and realized that a lot of universities often have artists in residence but not that many cities and counties do," Calabria said.
McRae will be paid from funds provided to the United Arts from Wake County, which amounts to about $500,000 a year. Calabria said the idea was easy to sell to his fellow commissioners.
"One of the key elements of this is it's a high return on investment -- not only do we have an artist who is creating works for public consumption, which is important, but the artist is amplifying and leveraging all of the things we already have in Wake County," Calabria said.
McRae wants to be a role model for the young people she talks to. She said it's important to show students they can make a career out of something they love.
"If I didn't meet the right people when I was an undergrad I would have never thought that this could be a career but it's such an exciting career," she said.