Poster child

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

This year’s Festival at Sandpoint poster couldn’t have come at a better time — and from a better artist. Longtime local photographer Woods Wheatcroft has spent decades as a high-end image maker for national publications, but always remained true to his community roots in Sandpoint. His selection as the 2022 Festival poster artist, and the results of his labor, are an affirmation of his love of both people and place.

Artwork courtesy Woods Wheatcroft.

The poster is a collage of more than 150 faces of Sandpointers — all snapped on film and cut out using a razor blade, Weatcrofth’s favorite pair of purple scissors and pasted up using a regular old glue stick. He estimates it took “north of 75 hours” to construct the pastiche — a direct and admitted homage to The Beatles’ iconic Sgt. Pepper’s album cover — all of which did good work on his soul.

“I wasn’t intending it to be a ‘who’s who’ of Sandpoint. I hope people realize that it’s impossible to get everybody who’s important on the poster. It’s about community,” he told the Reader in a Tuesday afternoon phone call from an undisclosed beach on the Green Monarchs. 

“In its pure form it’s about community and I feel like music is a conduit — engaging not only with the music but with each other,” he said.

At a time when Sandpoint is in such a dramatic moment of flux — dare we say “identity crisis,” as it grows in often dislocating ways — Wheatcroft is clear that his intention with the poster is to serve as a composite reflection of who we are and have been.

“It’s a time capsule,” he said, noting the number of faces in the collage who are no longer with us: Charley Packard, Sprouts, Dann Hall and others, whose images are honored in remembrance. 

“I started my career like a lot of photographers: I took pictures of trees and rocks and they don’t talk back, but running my lens back on humanity is one of the better directions I went with my photography,” he said. “I do consider myself a bit of a record keeper.”

That’s not to suggest that Wheatcroft’s collage is a memorial. Rather, he sees it as a work in progress.

“I don’t think it’s finished. I think it’s finished when it’s edge-to-edge full,” he said.

As we are, Wheatcroft captured us face-by-face.