Each year, MOFGA hosts an artwork contest to find an illustration that captures the essence of the Common Ground Country Fair. The winner gets $1000, as well as the satisfaction of seeing her/his creation on posters and t-shirts all over Maine and beyond! We chose the artwork for 2008 last August. Grace Keown, of Dixmont, won that contest with her illustration of a red barn and hayfield.

The contest is open only to Maine residents and MOFGA members (regardless of residence). If you are not yet a MOFGA member, click here to join. Welcome!

Artists may submit two entries. All entries must arrive in the MOFGA office by 4 p.m. on Friday, August 8, 2008. We generally make the final selection in August but it may take us a couple of months so be prepared to leave your submission(s) with us in the MOFGA office for a while. MOFGA will retain full rights to the winning design.

MOFGA will feature the winning design on the 2009 Fair poster, t-shirt and promotional literature. A profile of the artist will appear in this newspaper. MOFGA also sends out a press release focusing on the artist and the artwork. In addition to these promotional benefits, the winning artist receives $1,000.

While we do not want to discourage creativity in any way, we do want you to be aware that the Artwork Selection Committee disqualifies many absolutely outstanding works of art simply because they do not fit our technical requirements. The Committee considers how artwork will look on a poster, a t-shirt, and other Fair promotional materials and merchandise. Artwork must be beautiful as well as practical for it to work as our poster/T-shirt design.

Here are some suggestions on how to make sure your submission will be usable:

• Do not use crosshatching as shading - ­ Very, very fine pen lines, spaced closely together in a crosshatching technique, are not cleanly reproducible on cloth. Unlike paper, t-shirt fabric is textured. The fineness of detail achievable is therefore limited in comparison to what can be achieved on the smooth surface of paper.
• Stay away from large geometric borders - Frames or borders using large geometric shapes, which must be precisely controlled during printing, will often become skewed or distorted on fabric. T-shirt fabric is not dimensionally stable like paper, therefore during the printing and handling process the material will shift and large geometric shapes become distorted.
• Avoid watercolors - Soft gradations of color, such as what is seen in watercolor-work, are exceedingly difficult to reproduce in the T-shirt screen-printing process. Screen-printing as a technique is a stenciling process that relies on modulating the density of a spatter pattern of fairly large flecks of color to simulate gradations of color. The spatter flecks make watercolor reproduction onto a T-shirt inexact. When possible we will avoid selecting watercolors as winning entries.
• Don't use too much white - The Fair T-shirts are printed on colored fabric; they are not printed on white. Thus, whenever white or pale tints of color are used in original artwork, white ink must be printed on the shirt. All of the subtleties of pale color seen in original artwork will not be reproducible on Fair shirts.
• Dimensions should be roughly the same - Entries definitely do not have to be exact squares, but your submission should be pretty close in height and width dimensions. Panoramic artwork does not fit well on our shirts.
  

See artwork from fairs past.

Applications for the Artwork Contest are posted below and available by contacting the Fair office at cgcf@mofga.org or 207-568-4142.

If you would like us to return your submission by mail, please include either $5.00 (regular mail) or $10.00 (registered mail), along with adequate packaging. If you would like your piece insured when we send it back to you, please call the office to determine what extra charge will need to be assessed.

Below are links for downloading guidelines and the application form for the contest.

• Artwork Contest Cover Letter (Word doc)
• Artwork Contest Guidelines (Word doc)
• General Guidelines for Participating in the Fair
• Artwork Contest Application (PDF)

Good luck in creating your design and thanks for participating! Again, the deadline for submissions is August 8th, 2008. Please call 568-4142 or email us at: cgcf@mofga.org if you have questions.