From BestOfNewOrleans.com: “Jazz Fest 2011 poster unveiled” Art4Now, which produces the annual posters for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, this morning unveiled the poster for Jazz Fest 2011: an image of a young Jimmy Buffett busking on a French Quarter street corner with a sign that says “Will Play for Gumbo”(an allusion to Buffett’s song “I Will Play for Gumbo”). The poster was painted by Garland Robinette, the WWL-AM radio host and longtime painter:
He pictures Jimmy at the corner he worked as night melted to dawn, with the musician’s trusty Falcon parked nearby, and after his weekend gig filled his cigar box. Flying in the distance is a parrot, prefiguring Buffett’s ultimate destination of Key West, Fla. And if you look closely on the sidewalk behind the Falcon, you’ll see the contemporary Jimmy Buffett walking into the future, glancing over his shoulder at the young man who would eventually catapult him to international acclaim. Robinette’s glorious image is heightened by this allegory, spanning and compressing time in an image richly imagined right down to the old N.O.P.S.I. manhole cover in the street.
Update: A video of the artist Garland Robinette talking about the paint is available at WWL.com