Fieldnotes: CB Chats with Cat Alexander
Guided by the delicate practices of Japanese Suminagashi and Turkish marbling, Austin designer Cat Alexander transforms hand-printed works into textiles and wallpapers that feel alive with movement. Since launching her eponymous brand, she has built a loyal audience enchanted by the harmony of craft, color, and contemplation in every piece.
Each Cat Alexander Design Studio piece begins as an original artwork, with hours spent outdoors setting up basins of water and natural sea moss beneath the canopy of a Texas pecan tree. Cat mixes her own inks and pigments, coaxing them across the surface before submerging treated paper to capture the design. If one step is amiss, the inks will not take and the entire process—including the creation of her custom pigments—must begin again.
Her patterns reflect nature’s rhythm, from mountains and lakes to intricate root systems, and once finalized, Cat and her design team digitally adapt the prints for wallpaper and textiles through careful iterations of scale and placement. The dynamic results evoke the essence of these locales while preserving the intimacy of the hand-made process.
Raised in a family of practicing fine artists and architects, Cat continues this lineage with work that is deeply personal, rigorously made, and endlessly adaptable. Her designs carry a quiet modernity that pairs beautifully with the heritage block prints we love, creating a layered juxtaposition of old and new that feels fresh, timeless, and full of life.
I was thrilled to select the prints and palettes that spoke to me and edit them into a curated collection for our shops. Her beautiful, striking fabrics have been sewn into our signature bolster and Euro pillows, forming a limited-edition capsule that is personal, one-of-a-kind, and built to endure in both quality and the beauty it brings to your home.
xxCB
Growing up in a family of creatives, how did you find your place among the different mediums? What’s one memory from that time that still shapes how you see and make art today?
CA: From an early age, I benefited from tagging along to spectacular studio art classes and experiences. I spent my childhood taking year-round art classes and attending a fine arts academy in the summers. About three years ago, I found myself spending more and more time steeped in the artistic practice of Suminagashi, studying Turkish marbling techniques, mixing pigments, and tinkering with making prints on paper and fabric remnants. I became mesmerized by the practice of creating a still print that in many ways reflected the organic movement of the water in which the artwork was created. As I worked the ink into the water, I imagined myself being immersed in the design.
One day, as I stood there splattered in ink and surrounded by prints, I decided to find a way to translate the feeling of being immersed in the artwork to a scalable reality.
You spent decades in the corporate world. What would most people be surprised to learn is similar between that work and your life as an artist?
CA: Cat Alexander Design Studio is a blend of art and business. Similar skills are essential to design, launch, grow, and sustain the business infrastructure in any sector. Through formal education and decades of experience, I have amassed a boatload of both the good and the ugly of that! Strategic consulting and artistic design are wildly different, as you note. However, what connects the two is the definition of creativity that I adore the most: connecting the seemingly disconnected.
In business, we approach every engagement with a laser focus on the problem we are trying to solve and the outcomes we want to achieve. We study research and data in order to creatively design our strategic consulting supports.
In my studio, we do the exact same thing every step of the way. Inspired by an image or concept I want to create, I tweak my inputs from the ingredients to the printmaking process to get to an original result. And, like in business, as we take that product to market as a wallpaper or fabric, we collaborate closely with interior designers and architects to get the output to fit their needs.
When and where did you first encounter Turkish marbling and Japanese Suminagashi? What initially drew you to these techniques and led you to build your signature aesthetic around them?
CA: Early on, I was especially drawn to photography and the practice of fabric printmaking. The freedom of mixing pigments to create a unique color and then playing with the saturation of the dye on various parts of the fabric drew me to the practice. With photography, I loved the exploration of printing the photos on a number of surfaces such as cloth and various papers. I spent hours in the darkroom burning and dodging images, playing with sepia tones, and layering images on top of one another. In both practices, there was a “right” way to mix the print dye or the chemicals. I was drawn to learning that “right” way and then immediately to tweaking the margins to explore what I could craft beyond a traditional print. It is this same philosophy that draws me to my current practice.
The meditative act of doing Suminagashi is what inspires me most. Traditionally, it is done with one ink color and one surfactant in a basin of water. Dropping the ink and then the surfactant into the basin one after the other and watching the design evolve in the water is rhythmic and immersive. The act of making one print can take hours. I get completely lost in a piece of artwork when I am creating it.
Suminagashi is generally done with one color, while Turkish marbling generally involves multiple colors. A personal difference in how I think of them is that the art of practicing Suminagashi influences my mindset while I drop my ink and surfactant into the basin. Then Turkish marbling influences my shift in focus to manipulating the ink once it is in the basin. I rarely have a concept of how a print will translate to a wallcovering or textile in mind as I am making it. For me, that is a separate part of the design arc.
What’s a current source—whether an object, place, or experience—that has inspired one of your designs?
CA: This season, I am working on prints that remind me of the intricate root systems I observed on a particular hike in Colorado. I have passed this one little offshoot hundreds of times, and for some reason this summer I decided to take it. About 50 feet into the hike, I stumbled upon the most beautifully woven exposed roots alongside the trail. There is nothing shocking or seemingly notable about the roots, the trees, or even the hike per se, but in that moment it stopped me in my tracks. I am working on prints that abstractly mimic the organic way the roots have woven together so beautifully. I have done three sessions, and the perfect print continues to elude me; I will let you know when I get there!
When creating a print, do you envision where it might live—on a wall, a pillow, or elsewhere? How does that vision influence your choices?
CA: It’s a great question; the answer is I don’t! The practice of mixing ink, treating the paper, and blending the carrageenan into the water to prepare for a round of printmaking is therapeutic and exciting in and of itself. I treat those few days of anticipation as a time of pure imagination and visualization around an image or place in nature I am inspired by. And then, when it comes time to drop the ink into the tank and make the print, I get to think about absolutely nothing beyond what I am doing then and there.
The process of selecting prints and turning them into wallpaper and fabric patterns is separate. It is highly collaborative, and we focus on bringing the artwork to life in the context of a space. At that point, we are consumed by where it might live and how the space will be transformed.
If someone stepped into your studio, what song or playlist would immediately set the tone for the space?
CA: The range is wide and it’s usually about getting lost in the arc of a full album. My son has recently fallen in love with vinyl, so it’s been fun watching him discover the magic of listening to an album from start to finish.
The soundtrack shifts with the seasons of my work. Some months are more solitary, focused on ink making and printmaking—most recently, I’ve been spinning Kacey Musgraves albums, starting with her newest release and working backward. Other months are more collaborative, leaning toward pattern design and business development. Lately, Nancy Griffith has been playing as we reminisce about high school memories, and Hermanos Gutierrez fills the room beautifully when we’re immersed in conversation and creation.
Living by its motto “Keep Austin Weird,” your hometown is full of character. Describe your perfect day in the city, from breakfast to sunset.
CA: Character, for sure! We’ve lived here off and on for decades and watched our dear city evolve. I start most mornings early with quiet stillness—meditation and a bit of journaling—before coffee, a small mountain of vitamins, and diving into the day as the rest of the house wakes up.
Being just steps from Lady Bird Lake, nine times out of ten you’ll find me on a 5-mile loop with my wonder mut. If that’s not in the cards, I’ll do a weight session at the Town Lake YMCA, a spot that will always have my heart. On open days, I might zip to Pilates with a talented friend in Westlake or grab a court at the South Austin Tennis Center—I’m new to the sport and absolutely hooked.
Most “free” afternoons revolve around mountain biking, whether it’s attending mountain bike races or hosting the Maroons crew at the house. That usually means Taco Deli frozen margaritas for the parents, tacos and queso for the kids, and a lot of chaos! Last weekend, decidedly even too hot to walk down & jump in Barton Springs, a dozen teammates walked down to the Alamo Drafthouse on S. Lamar to escape the heat—miraculously, they weren’t politely excused out for being too rowdy!
And now, with ACL just around the corner, we’re gearing up. Living this close, you either lean in or risk being run over by the fun; we lean in!
The entire CB team couldn’t stop talking about your lip color when you visited our shop. Please don’t gatekeep—we need the details!
CA: I would never; I owe it all to inspiration by others. I was wearing Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk liner/lipstick topped off with Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer in Caramel because there is always one rolling around in the center console of my truck and my fanny pack!
