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Festival Poster

Arts Festivals across the country often advertise themselves with collectible posters.  Some festivals hire an advertising agency to design their poster.  Others commission the prior year’s Best of Show winner to do an illustration for their poster.  The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts does things a bit differently.

Our posters are unusual in that they are all the work of one family.  For fifty years Lanny Sommese, distinguished professor emeritus of visual arts in Penn State’s Stuckeman School of Visual Arts, designed the Festival’s poster.  Sommese retired from Penn State in the spring of 2014, and in 2017 his daughter Saige joined him as our poster’s co-designer.  Lanny Sommese passed away in 2022, but his daughter continues this unique legacy.

To learn more about the Arts Festival’s posters, check out Festival Posters Tell Stories Too, a 2017 blog poster by then Executive Director Rick Bryant.  A full set of Arts Festival posters is on display in the HUB-Robeson Center on Penn State’s University Park campus.

Kristin Sommese is proud to sponsor the 2025 Arts Festival poster designed by her daughter Saige.

The 36” x 24” poster, which features vibrant colors and the iconic jester, will be free at the following State College locations beginning June 17 until the end of Arts Fest:

Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts  403 S. Allen St., Suite 205A

Downtown State College Improvement District  127 S. Fraser St.

State College Framing Company and Gallery  160 Rolling Ridge Drive

The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau  204 W. Beaver Ave.

Hintz Family Alumni Center  Penn State campus

HUB-Robeson Center Desk  Penn State campus

After the Festival you can purchase the poster through our online store.

Vintage Arts Festival posters from previous years are available for purchase while supplies last.

Posters are printed on heavy stock and are 24” wide by 36” high
Posters are $15.00 each, plus $7.50 for shipping and handling

Purchase a Vintage Poster

More about Lanny Sommese

Lanny Sommese took undergraduate degrees from the University of Florida and received his MFA Degree at the University of Illinois. He started teaching at Penn State shortly thereafter.

Sommese’s work is the subject of two books, Lanny Sommese: World Master and Lanny Sommese: X-Ray Vision. His work has been reproduced in hundreds of periodicals and books, such as Graphis, The New York Times, Communication Arts, A History of Graphic Design, and A History of Contemporary Graphic Design.

Sommese’s posters are included in numerous collections including the Museum for Deutsche Geschichte, Berlin; Muzeum Plakatu w Wilanowie, Warsaw; Musee D’Histoire Contemporaine, Paris; The Central Institute of Fine Art, Beijing; Moravaska Galerie, Brno; Kanazawa University, Japan; The Museum of Applied Art, Helsinki; and in the Library of Congress National Poster Collection, which has more than 100 of Sommese’s posters in its collection.

In addition to many other professional honors, he was a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale, an elite international group of graphic designers based in Zurich.

Lanny Sommese passed away in 2022.

Saige Sommese

The poster for the 2025 Arts Festival was designed by Saige Sommese, a 2017 graduate of the Penn State Graphic Design program.

She has been designing the Festival posters since 2018, at first assisting her father, Lanny, with the designs and now creating them herself.  In addition to poster design, Saige specializes in logos, branding, illustration, and UI web design for individuals, small brands, and large companies alike.

Visit the Festival Store!

Get a Festival poster and buy Festival t-shirts and other merchandise at the corner of College and Allen – or visit our online store.

Festival Store