Poster design features Olympia's energy

By STEVE JONES
Staff Writer

Purchasing souvenirs from the Great American Brass Band Festival is for many festival-goers as big a tradition as the trumpets and tubas blaring across the town.
This year, the festival's signature souvenir poster has been designed by Iowa artist Gary Kelley. 
Kelley is a renowned illustrator whose designs have appeared in several prominent publications. His works have been in Time magazine, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. He has created numerous book covers as well as NFL and NBA sports designs. This year he served as the official artist of the 128th Kentucky Derby.
Kelley's GABBF poster was originally an oil painting of the New Orleans-based Olympia Brass Band -- an annual musical participant in the festival. It is an image of the band huddled together in dark-colored suits playing before a light background. 
"I wanted to create the energy and feel of this band," Kelley said. "They are all individual musicians playing as a whole. Every musician has leeway to be artistic on their own, but still they are playing as a whole, bunched up all together."
Kelley was contacted by the Norton Center's Debra Hoskins, a festival organizer, after she had seen his Derby art earlier this year. Kelley said the GABBF finally gave him an opportunity to do a project that had long intrigued him.
"I had always wanted to do this piece about the Olympia Brass Band, but I'd never had the excuse because I was so busy. I never was able to stop my other projects. This gave me that excuse," said Kelley, who has visited New Orleans several times and enjoys its vast music scene.
Kelley has done multiple pieces about music and musicians. He said it is an ideal theme for his style of art.
"You can relate to it on so many levels whether it's visually or with your ears," Kelley said. 
A second poster from local artist Tim Simpson also will be on sale at this year's festival.
Simpson's poster is a depiction of three children enjoying a brass band concert in Danville's Weisiger Park. Titled "Celebrate America," it is a patriotic design highlighted with American flags and red and blue balloons.
As in past years, T-shirts, polo shirts and souvenir pins also will be available. 

The T-shirts will cost $13 for children's sizes, $16 for adult sizes S-XL, $17 for 2XL, and $18 for 3XL. 

Polo shirts are priced $34 for sizes S-XL, $35 for 2XL, and $36 for 3XL.

The pins will cost $5 apiece, and posters are $10 each. 

CD recordings of highlight performances since 1996 also will be available and cost $15.