This has to be a premiere! Most singers get tattoos without asking anyone's permission or announcing it on the web, some get a Jesus figure on a calf, others get a battered woman in the neck, to each his own,… but Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has another idea: A sort of design contest for his future tattoo.
The tattoo will be about the TV show ‘Northern Exposure’, which was already the inspiration for everything in his life, from his band’s name (Bon (h)Iver with an h means good winter in French, an expression used in the show apparently) to his record label's label (Chigliak comes from a character of the series)… sure, he loves that show!
Interestingly enough, the winner of the 99designs contest will win a cash price, but this is the exact description Vernon posted on twitter:
‘I named my band after an episode of Northern Exposure. In the episode a women transforms a gold rush village into a cultural place with one single dance in a tavern. They name the town after her, Cicely, Alaska.
The art direction in the episode is unmistakably Mucha and I want to get a very large tattoo of this on my left arm.
Ill include some images of the actual episode, of Cicely herself, and of some of the Mucha pieces I want the shape and style to be like. A tall rectangular, stained glass, bold lines shadow box!
Please, help!
My favorite, hopefully what your illustrations will be based on, is the image I uploaded of Cicely with arms outstretched in mid-dance. You can't see her with the flowing scarf in her hands, but that would be cool if we could involve that. THANK YOU!
This is a really important thing to me. I don't know how to express that exactly… Its a TV show but it weirdly explained my life to me. Cicely is the metaphor for that.’
It is really precise, but in case you would like to participate, hurry up! It may be too late already and you will have to do better than the five finalists picked by Vernon and whose designs you can view here. According to Pitchfork, he'll pick a winner soon.
Is he gona start a new trend? Contests for cover album design, for band t-shirts design,… the possibilities are immense, and if artists decide to do it the Amanda Palmer way, they may just invite the winner on stage and even save this cash price.