Sentinel staff report, May 12, 2005
When the ballots were counted Wednesday, local artist Heidi Gottfried emerged as the winner — and the runner-up — in the annual Monterey Bay Strawberry Festival poster contest.
The 11th annual festival will be Aug. 6 and 7 in downtown Watsonville.
Festival organizers met Wednesday to make plans and pick the poster from among the top 10 of 17 entries.
Organizers hope to top last year’s crowd, estimated at 67,000 people, with plenty of live entertainment. The names of acts weren’t released, but organizers said to expect lots of brass and percussion.
The festival will also include a soccer tournament, and there will be lots of food, including the celebrated fruit.
Gottfried’s winning design, which features a giant strawberry floating above a panorama of a beach, strawberry field and the landmark bandstand in the City Plaza, will be used to advertise the festival. The poster will be plastered throughout the Monterey Bay area and will hang in 250 restaurants, motels and corporate lunch rooms between San Jose and San Francisco.
Gottfried, who entered twice, will collect $750 for her first and second place entries. The St. Francis Central Coast Catholic High School art teacher previously designed the poster for the Santa Cruz County Fair.
Third place, and a $100 prize, went to Peggy Marketello of Santa Cruz. Andra Rudolph of Santa Cruz earned an honorable mention.