Katherine (Miles) Stippich was active in Wichita art circles from her high school days until her death in 1962. Born in Las Cruces, N.M., in 1889, she came to Wichita in 1899.
Her mother's family had been part of the group of pioneers that came to the area in the 1870s.
Katherine's earliest artistic endeavors were in painting china and place cards. After graduating from Wichita High School in 1908, she studied at Fairmount with Elizabeth Sprague, the college's first art instructor.
Many of Stippich's watercolors and oils are of the Kansas prairies in all seasons – vibrant redbuds in the spring, lush green in the summer, golden cottonwoods in the fall, snow in winter.
She was also intrigued with grain elevators, calling them Trojan Horses.
In 1915 she married Walter Stippich, a local lumberman. Their only daughter, Mary Elizabeth '36, presented a collection of her mother's watercolors – an expression of Stippich's love of the prairies – to Wichita State, which the WSU Alumni Association is pleased to possess.
