NOTE (Wednesday, January 26, 2022): This feature has been updated to correct the surname of Ryan Patrick's friend and former business partner, Harry Eppers.

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Ryan Patrick has grown up attending Newtown Arts Festival.

“I’ve gone to the festival every year,” he said Monday morning. “I love the arts festival.”

Patrick’s mother Barbara, a fabric art designer, has “always had a booth at the festival,” he said, “so I’ve grown up helping her, sitting in the booth for hours, watching her interact with others, and exploring other booths with friends.”

This year, it will be his work that others are admiring, long before the formal three-day weekend event opens on September 16. Following a call for entries late last year and then a judging session last week, Patrick’s design has been selected to represent The 2022 Newtown Arts Festival.

Speaking with The Newtown Bee last week, Patrick said he was “beyond honored to be able to represent the festival and the town this way. This is a dream come true.”

Patrick’s untitled design has a woodblock appearance, with details that will appeal to local residents and non-residents alike. A rooster represents the town’s seal, and an American flag is an obvious nod to the famous Main Street flagpole.

But the design also includes a heart and a gazebo — the latter being a nod to Holcombe Hill, according to Patrick.

“They are fun and recognizable shapes,” he said January 17, “subtle things that could be interpreted as very generic, but if people from Newtown saw this, they would know that it was about Newtown without the word Newtown having to be on it.”

It also literally works in the ongoing festival theme, “A Celebration of the Arts,” with a banner carrying those words across the midsection of the design.

Patrick was inspired, he said, “by the fun and whimsical aspect of the town and arts scene, and the more traditional aspects of the town.”

Arts Festival Chair Barbara Snyder agrees with the breadth of local artistic talent.

“The number and quality of submissions we received shows how much talent we have in this town,” she said January 18. Snyder was joined on the selection committee by Nancy Cole, Laura Lerman, Michele Lurie, Linda Parsloe, Andrea Spencer, and David Cole Wheeler.

“I am delighted to be working with a local resident artist to represent the tenth anniversary of this year’s festival,” Snyder added.

Newtown Cultural Arts Commission Chair Laura Lerman noted the challenge of selecting this year’s winning entry.

“We had 13 strong submissions for the Arts Festival artwork,” she said January 19. Four working artists volunteered their professional time, she said, “to make this very difficult decision.

“As we head into our tenth Newtown Arts Festival, it is the arts community in Newtown that helps us grow,” she said.

Inspired By Home

Patrick, 21, is currently in his fourth of five years planned at Northeastern University, where he is majoring in graphic design with a minor in global fashion.

While in Boston he has continued his graphic design work, first as a shoe designer with Shoe Design Co-Op, then as a junior designer for I.E. Design, and now as a graphic designer for the Boston Red Sox.

Until last year, the 2018 Newtown High School graduate also served as a designer with Ryan Patrick Design, a small clothing business he co-founded in 2019 with friend Harry Eppers.

The two often donated part or all proceeds from designs to organizations, “depending on the campaign,” Patrick said. Two years ago, ahead of the eighth anniversary of 12/14, the two released shirts that raised a few thousand dollars through sales.

“Anyone who bought a shirt got to select from organizations in town,” he said, “to determine which organizations proceeds went to.”

Ryan Patrick Designs is no longer running, “only because we’re both so busy with other things,” Patrick said, “but the town has always been an inspiration and something that me and Harry had looked to support.”

Patrick also continues to work with clients on a freelance basis, producing branding and social graphics to elevate their overall appeal.

He is also now part of a small group of artists to have their work both featured and celebrated. He joins past logo designers Tracy Van Buskirk (2012 and 2015), Carol Collins (2013), Julia Sikes Provey (2014), Susanne Gilmore (2016), Linda Parsloe (2017), Virginia Zimmermann (2018), Paula Brinkman (2019), and Nancy Cole (2020-21).

Patrick’s art will be featured on posters, T-shirts, and splashed across social media, websites, and preview features, including many in this newspaper, leading up to the September 16-18 festival.

He will also have a booth of his own this year. The Arts Festival Committee has traditionally offered a booth to the designer of each year’s logo, where they can feature their art while also being surrounded by the posters and T-shirts printed with their design.

The selection of his work to represent the festival also means Patrick won a $1,000 cash prize from Newtown Cultural Arts Commission.

On the phone last week, he never mentioned the prize.

“Newtown has always given me inspiration, and it’s always very fun and easy to design for this town because I really think it’s such a special place,” he said. “The arts scene and arts community in Newtown is just as unique as the town itself.”

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Associate Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.