When festival season rolls around, the highlights typically include which bands you can hear and what food you can eat. But behind many festivals are artists designing the visual elements to fully complete a festival goer’s experience. One of those visually appealing items that sets the tone for the fest, is the poster. Not only does the design lend itself to merch like T-shirts and bags, but also many festival goers collect the posters. This year, French Quarter Festival sought the vision of local artist Anne Lipscomb to bring the year’s design to life.
Did you always want to be an artist? I grew up an artist. My dad is artistic, he’s an architect, so I had him as an influence and it surrounded me, growing up. But I kept pursuing it and studied [art] in college. I got a digital art degree, so I became more of a digital illustrator at that time. Then after college, I kind of got back into my studio art and picked up watercolor, and now I do both as much as I can.
How did you get connected with French Quarter Fest? I know a few people who are associated with French Quarter Fest who are very familiar with my art, and one of them just thought of me when it came to the poster, wanted to nominate me, so they brought up my name. I don’t know how it has worked for them previously, but yeah I just had somebody in there put out a good word for me and it was an awesome opportunity, so I accepted.
What was your process like to create the poster? I worked closely with French Quarter Fest, specifically their merch committee. They had a desired design in mind, as far as the feel for it. They wanted more of an art nouveau style. So, I went off of that, and my knowledge of French Quarter Fest and New Orleans culture, and just kind of ran with it. I decided to a cleaner design. I do a lot of hand-drawn stuff. If anyone’s ever seen me on Instagram, it’s a lot of more hand-drawn styles, but I wanted to do something a little cleaner for this, and I think it was well received. So, yeah, I just kept working with them and sent them mock-ups and over the course of a few months, it developed into a really beautiful design that I love.
How would you describe the scene on the poster? It’s got [an] Art Nouveau style. There’s a lot of ornamental borders that are associated in the design and within the border, so you have this ornamental arch in the poster. And then within the archway is Pirate’s Alley with a lone musician silhouette in the foreground. [In] the background at the end of the alley, you see a second line marching towards the sunset and or sunrise, so there’s a nice warm glow coming from in front of that second line. I chose Pirate’s Alley because I feel like it’s overlooked in a lot of ways. I know that the name comes up a lot when talking about the French Quarter, but I feel like it’s a walkway between two worlds of the French Quarter. So like you’re coming out of Jackson Square and going deeper into the Quarter. I’m not sure how to describe it, but for me, every time I walk down that particular corridor, it kind of prepares me for the French Quarter in a way, and gets me out of the crowd.
Favorite medium to use? Honestly, I don’t think I [have a favorite.] I love pen on paper.
What part of the city sparks your creativity? I like the places that are most serene, like City Park and at times Audubon Park and by the lake. Those are places that I love physically being in the most, but I’d say the most inspiration I get is probably the heaviest populated areas like the French Quarter because I love people. I love people watching.
If you weren’t an artist and you were doing any other job in the world, what would you be doing? I’m a very physically active person. If I had the time or money to be educated in this, physical therapy would be a really cool thing to do.
