Gilroy
– For the first time since 1992, the winners of this year’s
garlic festival poster contest are all locals, with 2001-contest
winner and photographer Kris Knutson taking home the top prize.
Gilroy – For the first time since 1992, the winners of this year’s garlic festival poster contest are all locals, with 2001-contest winner and photographer Kris Knutson taking home the top prize.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival Association announced Tuesday that Knutson’s poster – featuring a photograph of a fork holding up a garlic bulb, full of rich detail and cast in a soft light with just a hint of color visible – would be the face of this year’s festival. It will appear on T-shirts, mugs, aprons, flyers, advertisements and other festival-related merchandise.
The decision to choose 52-year-old Knutson’s work was not difficult, said Karen Scorsur, chairwoman of the retail committee of the festival and a nurse at the surgery department of Saint Louise Regional Hospital.
“Oh my gosh – this is just so obvious,” she said of her reaction at seeing the submitted posters. Knutson’s poster caught her eye because it was “simple, elegant.”
Despite the appearance of simplicity, the poster was the result of months of work, said Knutson. Even choosing the perfect bulb of garlic was a chore, as he took the photographs for the poster in December when garlic was out of season. As a result, he drove around to several stores before finding what he wanted at a roadside stand off U.S. 101.
“I looked for the right one, very clean, very smooth,” he said. “Just the shape is very simple, very classic.”
The perfect bulb of garlic sits near the top of the poster with the fork running straight up the middle. All this is an inset, with the dates and title of the festival running above and below it, framed by a rectangle with scalloped edges reminiscent of a postage stamp – a deliberate allusion, the artist said.
Knutson – born in Anchorage, Alaska and a Gilroy resident for 10 years – was the contest winner in 2001 and placed second in 2005. Now full of pride for the city, he was happy to hear all three winners were local.
“That’s cool,” he said. “Nothing worse than somebody coming in from New York City.”
The winner of the 2005 contest was a graphic designer from New York. The vast majority of contests have featured winners from outside Gilroy, said Chris Filice, administrative support manager for the festival.
There has never been a contest in her 13 years with the festival that all three winners were from Gilroy. The last time it happened was in 1992 and it is possible that was the only other time it has occurred since the contest began in 1985, Filice said.
This year, in addition to all the laurels, all the prize money will be staying in the area. Knutson took home $750, second-place winner Whitney McClelland was awarded $400 and third-place winner Jean Castillo got $200.
The best part is not the money or the publicity, said Knutson. The best part is seeing the posters – copies of which he plans on sending to his parents in Wisconsin – come off the printing press.
“It starts to come to life,” he said. “There’s hundreds of them stacked there. It’s beautiful – it’s like watching your car come off an assembly line.”
