Winner of Seafood Blues and Jazz Festival 2013 Poster Announced

This year's Artist for the 20th Annual Pleasure Island Seafood Blues & Jazz Festival is local artist Robert Scott Knowles from Carolina Beach, North Carolina.

Robert's historic fantasy-inspired Buddy Guy playing the blues on the bayou was inspired by a paragraph in Buddy Guy's Bio:

Though Buddy Guy will forever be associated with Chicago, his story actually begins in Louisiana. One of five children, he was born in 1936 to a sharecropper’s family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans. Buddy was just seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift "guitar"—a twostring contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother’s hairpins. He recounts his early efforts with the instrument, and his ability to keep his faith when his family chased him out of the house for making a racket. "I would go out in the yard, on the levee, to practice," he says. "We didn’t have electric lights or running water—you could hear that guitar a mile away in the country, so I’d have to go a long way away so they didn’t say 'Get out of here with that noise!'"

When we talked to Robert about his inspiration, he said: "After I read that Bio, I had no doubt from the beginning what this artwork was to become. I researched a sharecropper’s life during the 30’s, the dress they wore and the life they led. I took Buddy at 76 and translated his facial features to that of a 7 year old. I was moved by Buddy’s memories so long ago and decided to translate this memory into a piece of art." As you can see, Robert has created a unique expression of a Buddy Guy memory to share with all of the Festival-goers this year.

This year we had a total of eleven entries which made for a difficult decision for the judges. All of the entries were very colorful, fanciful and energetic. The uniqueness and the implied dream-like memory set this year’s selection apart from the others. Robert previously won top honors for the 2008 Seafood Blues & Jazz poster which we commonly call "The Edgar and Johnny Winter Poster."

We are proud to have Robert (once again) represent the 20th year of this great Festival. Robert will be attending the Festival where he will be signing posters, discussing his inspiration for this piece and offering additional selections of his unique artwork in the Arts and Wine Garden. Posters. T-shirts will be on sale soon at the Chamber offices and will be available at the Festival as long as supplies last.

Congratulations Robert!!