Last summer, on the second Saturday in June, Griffith Avenue was host to a one-of-a-kind community music experience as residents transformed their modest front porches into performance stages for local artists. On Wednesday of this week, the date for PorchFest OBKY 2019 was announced along with the winner of this year’s artwork design contest.
The free, one-day, open-air music festival that brought an estimated 2,000 people to an over half-mile stretch of Griffith Avenue last year is returning this summer on Saturday, June 8.
When planning the festival’s return this past August, PorchFest founders Andy Brasher and Tamarra Miller announced that they were “hoping to feature the talent of a local graphic artist that will help define the face of the 2019 PorchFest event.”
“We kind of wanted to crowdsource the design,” Brasher said. “We wanted somebody local.”
After receiving several submissions from both professional graphic designers and hobbyists, the winning design was selected.
Jacob Sommerville, a graphic design artist that designs T-shirts for Terry’s Tees, was selected as this year’s winner with his colorful logo-incorporated design.
“It always feels really good when you put work into something and it gets selected,” Sommerville said. “I think it’s the first time I’ve ever won a contest.”
Sommerville said his inspiration for the design came from a picture he had seen of “a guy playing a guitar.” He made the decision to replace the guy with an illustration of a duck, saying that feeding the ducks at Panther Creek Park is an activity that helps him to feel a sense of community.
If you look carefully at the design, you will notice that the guitar Sommerville is referring to is composed of both the house and the foundation on which it is sitting. Surrounding the house and guitar neck are several green moons whose expressions were inspired by the famous Moonlite moon.
Sommerville sketched out his original design, plugged it into Adobe Illustrator and began to experiment.
“I like different color schemes — bright colors that don’t always work together,’ Sommerville said. “I like to adjust tones and values to make something a little different. I’ve been working on color theory a lot this year.”
While Sommerville does design T-shirts for a living, he said this opportunity was different from his day job.
“This one is a little different because it’s my personal work,” Somerville said. “It feels great.”
Brasher said he and Miller were very happy with the design and hope to have it printed on shirts available for pre-sale soon.
“We sold out of T-shirts last year,” Brasher said. “A lot of people wanted to wear the shirts to the event last year — so opening up pre-sale should help with that.”
As far as the rest of PorchFest is concerned, Brasher said he and Miller have many details to sort through and a lot of planning left to do.
“We’re in the planning stages now,” Brasher said, “We’ve got a lot to work with — with a lot of artists interested and a lot of hosts interested.”
Brasher said, after receiving over 50 requests to play at the festival this year, PorchFest is now closed to submissions from local musicians. He said it is now a matter of weeding through the information they have and building the festival with interested local musicians, porch hosts and food trucks.
To learn more about PorchFest OBKY 2019 please visit their Facebook page.
