California Strawberry Festival Unveils Poster Winner
By Tim Pompey
Don’t look now, but spring is showing its usual early signs in California.
The temperatures are rising. No rain in the forecast.
The Dodgers are back in business. Hopes for a title are high.
And as of Tuesday, March 7, the California Strawberry Festival kicked off its 34th year by unveiling its 2017 poster contest winner during a luncheon at Yolanda’s Oxnard Harbor restaurant.
That’s right. The California Strawberry Festival is fast approaching. Come Saturday and Sunday, May 20 and 21, Oxnard will be buzzing with visitors. 66,000 last year. This year, with even more space available at College Park, that number could go up dramatically.
“Our California Strawberry Festival ranks among the top festivals in the nation and has generated 4.5 million dollars for local nonprofits, churches, and local schools,” said Festival chairperson Kim Gibas.
Launched in 1984 as a fundraiser to honor the local agricultural community and to celebrate the luscious strawberry, the California Strawberry Festival has blossomed into a major county event.
As it expands, it’s impact on the local community grows.
“We give out scholarships to local high schools and all the nonprofits that participate keep their money for their nonprofit usage,” Gibas explained. “We give stipends to the Boy Scouts, the Rotary and Lions Club. Anyone who works our festival gets a stipend to keep their organization going.”
Just as the Festival itself has gotten good word of mouth, news about the poster contest has also gotten around. Not just in Ventura County, but across the states and even from such faraway places as Europe. The winner gets $2,000 in prize money, plus a boat load of publicity as the poster gets splashed across Southern California.
The contest is open to any artist, professional or amateur. The winner not only has to present a top-notch entry, they also must have a feel for the Festival itself. “It has to fit the strawberry festival look,” said Gibas. “It has to look good on a T-shirt, and it has to emulate our community.”
While the contest attracts artists from many different locations, this year’s winner just happens to be local. Mandalay Beach to be exact.
Nomi Wagner, winning artist for the 2017 California Strawberry Festival poster contest
Nomi Wagner has been a photographer, painter, and digital artist for several decades. After graduating from USC and working as a dental hygienist for eighteen years, she found her calling in the arts as a professional portrait photographer. When the digital age took hold in the early 1990s, Wagner returned to the classroom and studied digital graphics at UCLA.
She developed her digital watercolor technique while studying traditional portrait painting at the California Institute of Art. Her goal was to mix colors and paint traditionally using a stylus, graphics tablet, and computer software instead of her regular brushes and paints.
Today Wagner’s portrait paintings hang in homes all over the country. Her clients email their favorite photographs, which she uses for reference as she paints each stroke of their portraits on her “virtual canvas.”
Her inspiration for her poster happened to be just outside her house. “When I walk out to our beach by Mandalay Bay, it just takes my breath away,” she said. “I love looking out at Santa Cruz and Anacapa Islands.”
Her poster is a cornucopia of Oxnard ocean scenery inspired by the simple pleasures of a picnic on a beach. “I just wanted to paint a picture that represented all of the things I love,” she revealed. “So I put together a picnic scene with strawberries from Oxnard and wine and cheese and breads. I put it out on the dunes and the islands are in the background.”
She credits her niece for encouraging her to enter this year’s contest. After thanking Wagner for a birthday card, her niece said, “You know this year they have included digital artists in the strawberry festival poster contest. I think you should enter.”
Wagner did just that, though secretly. “I didn’t tell anyone I entered because I didn’t want to tell anybody that I lost,” she laughed.
So now that the cat’s out of the bag, Wagner is trying to take in all the sudden attention thrown her way. “This is a peak experience in my career, probably the peak experience,” she stated. “This really puts it all together for me. I’m just so grateful that I’ve been blessed with all the things that have happened to me.”
She smiles as she adds, “This is the strawberry on the top.”
The poster contest is the official kickoff of the California Strawberry Festival.
Kim Gibas (l.) and poster contest winner Nomi Wagner (r.) stand next to a framed poster that will be featured at this year’s California Strawberry Festival
The annual luncheon is held to introduce the poster to the community. “We invite our sponsors, the media, our poster winner, and our board to say this is the launch and the beginning of the California Strawberry Festival,” said Gibas.
Oxnard Mayor Tim Flynn called the Festival “an amazing evolution.” He considers it a top brand for the city of Oxnard: “People across the country know about the strawberry festival and identifying it with Oxnard is one of the best branding efforts that can ever be conducted on behalf of the city.”
He estimates that over the two-day span, it will generate about ten million dollars for the local economy.
This year’s festival will feature more than fifty food booths with all things berry, lots of live music, gooey contests, Strawberryland, with rides and attractions for kids, fine arts & crafts, and celebrity cooking demonstrations.
And of course, seen everywhere in a poster, worn by many as a T-shirt, splashed in programs and across banners, Wagner’s beautiful depiction of beach life in Ventura County. Just looking at the art, there is a strong connection between good food, ocean scenery, and the tranquility of life along the Pacific.
As Wagner describes it, her artwork represents “the joy of living here in our beautiful and bountiful Ventura County.”
And of course, prominently featured, everyone’s favorite delicacy, the juicy red strawberry. Add a bowl, a spoon, and little whipped cream. Bake it in a pie. Eat them straight from a box. Whatever your preference, call it a yummy little piece of local heaven, or, as Gibas and Festival supporters would prefer, call it by its official name. The California Strawberry Festival.
For more information about this year’s Festival, visit their website at www.castrawberryfestival.org.
Official Poster of the 2017 California Strawberry Festival
Photo Credits: Tim Pompey
Tim Pompey, a freelance writer who has done lots of local affairs and entertainment/cultural writing, lives in Oxnard. Tim is also a fiction writer (Facebook Page). You can learn about his books on Amazon.com: amazon.com/author/booksbytimpompey.
Mr. Pompey’s Newest Book:
Deep Down is another roller coaster collection of short stories by author Tim Pompey. A mortician with ghost problems. A humanoid stranded in outer space. A B-17 bomber pilot haunted by voices from his past. These and other stories dig beneath reality and crawl through hidden tunnels to a world that exists without and within us. From childhood to old age, these stories are locked inside the mind, waiting to be discovered.
Go deep. Very deep. Find out what lies buried within your own imagination.
Deep Down On Amazon
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