Bon Iver Frontman Picks Winner of Tattoo Design Contest

After putting out an open call to artists earlier this month, Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon has picked a winner for his 99designs tattoo design contest. Vernon announced in mid-September that he was searching for a tattoo inspired by Northern Exposure, the TV series that yielded the Bon Iver moniker, in the style of Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphons Mucha. He selected Italian artist and designer Giulio Rossi as the winner; according to the competition site, 26 artists submitted 59 entries total. See the winning design here.

“In the episode, a woman 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,” Vernon wrote earlier this month. “This is a really important thing to me… I don’t know how to express that exactly… It’s a TV show but it weirdly explained my life to me. Cicely is the metaphor for that.”