SEQUIM — She’s the lavender lid-wearing poster girl of purple — the younger, hipper face of this weekend’s Sequim Lavender Festival.
She’s Mona, the festival’s persona this weekend and in promotions.
In real life, she’s Cat Orsborn, a Sequim dog groomer and reptile rescuer who occasionally performs in the Sequim and Port Angeles community theater circuit.
She will make her way around the festival this weekend, being a part of the event’s 11 a.m. Friday opening ceremonies at the Street Fair on the Fir Street main stage.
Orsborn, who helps her husband, Jeremy, operate K-9 Klips at 1087 E. Washington St., was approached by Sequim Lavender Growers Association board member Donna Green, who is Orsborn’s understudy when she can’t make the scene.
“I knew Donna, and she came to me to see if I would ride on the float during the Irrigation Festival,” Orsborn said.
“She came to me and said I resembled the girl in the poster.”
Poster from painting
Orsborn, who did take the long ride down Washington Street on the Sequim Lavender Festival’s float, referred to the promotional artwork by West Coast artist and illustrator Chris Witkowski and reproduced from an original oil painting.
It was a gutsy departure from the traditional nature artscape used to promote the festival.
The artwork, which shows Mona in a lavender-bud hat with cool sunglasses and reading the fest’s program in, of all places, a lavender field, has been showcased in the art on the festival’s posters, T-shirts, advertising and other promotional materials.
Orsborn has been posing for a lot of the trim, come-hither Mona photos in recent weeks.
The name, Mona, was the idea of Terry Stolz, lavender growers association president. He also considered the name “Claire,” but “Mona” had the edge.
Orsborn played the role of a “younger person” in the May Olympic Theatre Arts production of “Too Old for the Chorus” at the Sequim theater.
She will play the role of Madame in the Sept. 28 dinner theater production “Murder at the Cafe Noir.”
Orsborn and her husband have been Sequim residents for four years, coming here from Kitsap County.
Orsborn, as Mona, will be out mingling with the thousands of visitors to Sequim this lavender weekend, festival spokesman Paul Jendrucko said.
“She’s a pretty face, and we put a life to the poster,” Jendrucko said of Orsborn.
“We needed to put a human face behind Mona.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
