Park City Film Festival Poster.
the inaugural festival celebrates independent film and a love of the human made
The inaugural Park City Film Festival launched in October 2026 as a way to celebrate storytelling through the power of film, sparking creativity and connection. Asked by the founders of the Park City Film Series to create the first poster, I took inspiration from the film series’ home at the Park City Library as well as their logo, both of which feature a series of “holes” or “lenses” which allow light in and out.
Taking the direction that the poster must look handmade, rejecting any look of that made by a computer or AI, I approached the artwork as an experiment and process to combine encaustic and watercolor to create a unique piece that forces you to look through lenses to discover a larger story.
The final piece features a series of holes through an encaustic to see a vibrant watercolor background and a series of markings. Each lens tells its own story and put together, they combine to form a curated vision of human made ingenuity, just like the Film Festival and Film Series.
Inspired by place and film.
We view the world through unique lenses.
The creation of the poster:
Create a vibrant background of watercolor and mark making on paper
Paint holes or lenses with clear encaustic
Cover the whole painting in white encaustic
Scrape the whole thing smooth to reveal clear holes that provide an opening to the background
After 16 practice paintings and a decision from the film festival board, we elected for the option of white over the vibrant background. It was bright, hopeful, and reminded us writing on car windows after a snow, and it exciting and new. My vision was for a colorful background topped with a solid white with holes or “lenses” that revealed the background behind it. I’ve been playing with this process or versions of it since the spring, and the 16 practice paintings helped me figure out how to turn the vision into a reality. It was a reminder that you have to make a lot of shitty art sometimes before you figure it out.
Decision made, it was time to execute and I spent a week working on the final painting, actually making two to ensure I had the proper color variation and transparency that I wanted. The final result is wholly unique and a portal by which to explore stories. Each hole or lens is a reminder of what independent film offers the viewer - handmade, passion projects, creativity, connection.