Feature Artist - 85th Jacaranda Festival
The Grafton Jacaranda Festival is the longest running Floral Festival in Australia, this year celebrating its 85th year. I was chosen to not only be on the organising committee, but to be the inaugural Festival Feature Artist. In this role I created two special artworks for the purpose of being displayed on two limited edition t-shirts. We then extended this to tea towels, and I also created several more pieces to be featured on stubby coolers, badges, magnets, banners and more.
Several community driven art pieces were created for the festival, including a large outdoor mural, a large indoor mural and an interactive piece that featured letters in a popular park. I spent many days painting all of these places, and over the festival time created an interactive space in the park and mingled with everyone - locals, kids, travellers, international guests and returning Jacaranda Festival Queens and Princesses - to engage with the piece and sign words of welcome and positivity on the installation.
In collaboration with The Welders Dog Brewery in Armidale, NSW and The Jacaranda Festival, a very special purple coloured semi-sour european style lager was created. I was a part of the process both as a committee member and as the artist creating the can art / beer labels. Another purple drink was also rebranded for the festival with car art created by me.
One particularly special element to the 85th Festival was my use of past Queen Nanette on my 'Long Live The Jacaranda Queen' piece. Many members of her family traveled interstate to attend the Festival and see her face worn on t-shirts around town, and the purchased 30+ limited shirts for their whole family to wear.