Festival of Native Arts announces Hannah Foss as winner of logo design contest
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) - The Festival of Native Arts (FNA) has announced Hannah Foss as the winner of its logo design contest.
Announced on the non-profit organization’s Facebook page on December 13th, the contest involved designing a logo to fit the theme for FNA’s 48th annual festival, “Honor Our Elders”, which will be held virtually in 2021.
Foss explained that after brainstorming ideas, “I kind of fixed upon the idea of, like, a grandma, an elder.”
According to Foss, her work with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) has allowed her to travel to villages around the state. “I was blown away by how friendly, how kind, but also this quiet wisdom that the elders had and how welcoming they were.”
She said a goal was to incorporate all First Nations groups in Alaska into the logo design. “I did my best, tried to do my research to include as many as I could as best I could.”
Foss noticed that in the imagery she’s encountered, “There’s a lot of circles. Like there’s no beginning and end, so I tried to incorporate in a circle and try and evenly distribute out for very broad, very broad breakups.”
After graduating from UAF in 2013 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in Computer Arts, Foss worked for the university in several capacities before getting a position illustrating and cataloguing fossils at the Museum of the North.
Foss currently works at the university’s Geophysical Institute creating computer generated animation and digital illustration.
The deadline to submit entries for the contest was November 4th. “It’s amazing when you win, but there’s also that heartbreak when you enter something and you’re so excited and you have to try and insulate your heart,” Foss said.
She found out that her submission had been accepted on November 11th. “I was very excited. I wanted to post it everywhere. I wanted to be excited, but I wanted to leave it to the department to upload.”
Foss hopes that her design elicits positive feelings in those who view it. “I guess that’s the magic and also the big screwy thing about art, is once it’s out there in the world, people are going to interpret and attach feelings to the art that they feel. So it’s a little scary and it’s also very exciting and interesting to see how people put emotional touchstones upon your art.”
“The best I can do is try and draw from my own experiences of warmth and this positive energy, and hoping that other people might also draw that, or be able to attach something of themselves to that,” she said.
Copyright 2020 KTVF. All rights reserved.
