Chalet, Cannon, & CDAF ~~ one great mix!

Starkville Area Arts Council's president Laurie Burton and Chalet's Mark Wood are shown to the left of the official poster of the Cotton District Arts Festival 2015. To the right are Paige Cannon, the designer of the poster, and Jon Turner, the festival's chairman.

Every year, Starkville Area Arts Council hosts a contest, calling all artists to submit their poster designs for the upcoming year's Cotton District Arts Festival, which is held in April.  The official poster becomes the artwork for merchandising for that particular CDAF, posters, postcards, t~shirts, flyers, website, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.  Chalet mats and frames the chosen artwork; Mark Wood, owner, presents the artist with a check.  In this way, a beautiful thing happens each year:  Cotton District Arts Festival has a unique image and feel; an artist and their work is featured for the event; and Mark Wood and the Chalet sponsor this fabulous chance for an artist to become the new face of the Cotton District Arts Festival.  It's win~win~win!

The 2015 poster contest winner is Paige Cannon, a local who grew up here, went to MSU, and currently lives in this area as well.  As a child, Paige loved creating art, often asking for special assignments in art class so that she could nurture this aspect of herself.  Her art teacher obliged and enlisted Paige as a student aid in her art classes, for the love of art, and not for the grade.


Although color is a key part of Paige's love of art, as she matured, Paige became more interested in patterns, the repetitions she would notice in nature and the world around us.  There is no telling when inspiration will strike, so Paige is prepared to scribble that idea down on whatever is handy, whenever a concept forms.  "One morning, this year's poster design just popped in my head, so it was sketched extremely quickly on a yellow post-it note and then developed later," Paige explains.


When asked what she loves most about the Cotton District Arts Festival, Paige replied, "I love the diversity, of the people, of the art, of the food, of the music...I just love it all!  The hype and excitement of the festival and the time of the year, that just blends to get me, too!"


And we love the blend of your artwork's representation of the Cotton District Arts Festival 2015, Paige; congratulations and thanks for creating our CDAF 2015 poster!