KATIE VIGILANTE
Katie Vigilante is the principal designer of Fiore Vigilante which she founded in 2022. Initially creating fresh floral arrangements, noted for their distinctive design, she turned to arranging dried flowers she had painted with fresh arrangements.
She named the company Fiore Vigilante as Fiore (FEE-OR-AH) means flower in Italian. Katie was born in Rome, Italy and her last name is Vigilante.
In 2023, just after losing her mother to Alzheimer's disease, the roof of Katie’s studio collapsed. Though both devastated Katie, she immersed herself in her creative work, and began painting branches given to her by friends.
In 2024, back in her studio, she created the LUSH line (LOCAL UNIQUE SUSTAINABLE AND HASSLE-FREE) hand-painted floral sculptures for subscription, purchase, and commission.
Her LUSH work has been commissioned in San Sebastian Spain, New York, and in several businesses and private homes in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
You’ll find Katie’s LUSH subscriptions in Van Michael, Faced Facial Studios, Presmanes Interiors, Urban Cottage, and more.
She is represented by Michael Habachy in his Atelier in Atlanta Decorative Arts Center (ADAC) where her work can be purchased from his stunning Atelier and showroom. His showroom is open to the trades and general public.
Her floral sculptures begin with the client, vessel, and space. These core principles drive color, composition, and overall design of the floral sculpture.
Our principal photographer, Heidi Harris, of Everything Heidi LLC in Atlanta, has witnessed the reactions to Katie’s work in several instances.
“Art is usually definitive. What you see is what it is. This isn’t true of Katie’s sculptures. People often have their jaws drop, saying they are stunned at the beauty and stare in curious admiration. Her work conjures and expands your imagination. It’s very powerful.”
Heidi’s description of people’s reactions marry Katie’s vision of flowers having so many responsibilities as the concluding stanza of Emily Dickinson’s “Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower,” in which she reminds us of the profound place of the flower:
Great Nature not to disappoint
Awaiting Her that Day—To be a Flower, is profound Responsibility
Flowers are responsible for life on the earth, providing the fruit for the animals. They conjure grief, satisfaction, emergence, closure, ending, love, celebration, compassion, death, dying, sickness, relief, new life, beauty, graying, smiling, sadness, joy, and just because.
Katie’s sculptures give a new life and journey to florals worth imagining.
