We’re excited to announce Dallas-based multidisciplinary artist Temi Coker as the 2026 Texas Book Festival poster artist! His artwork, Between Here and There, is the official 2026 Festival poster image.
Every year, Texas Book Festival selects an artist with a strong Texas affiliation whose work reflects the spirit of the Festival, an annual celebration of imagination, creativity, community, and diverse artistic expression. Past artists include Sarah Wilson, Zeke Peña, Jon Flaming, Clemente Guzman, Julie Speed, Keith Carter, and many others throughout the Festival’s 30-year history.
Merchandise featuring Between Here and There will be available for purchase at the Festival, November 14–15, 2026, and online at Texasbookfestival.org. TBF Chief Operations Officer Dalia Azim interviewed Coker about his work and what it means to be this year’s poster artist.
DA: As an artist of many talents and a celebrated graphic designer, I’m curious how you got into art and how the various threads of your work intersect.
TC: My dad is a pastor, and growing up in Lagos, I played piano for praise and worship at his church. That was my first real encounter with creativity. I saw how music could make people feel something without a single word being spoken. That stuck with me. From there, it was photography, then graphic design, and now making physical products. The thread through all of it is the same: I want to make things that move people and make them feel seen.
DA: Take me through your creative process and how you created the artwork for the 2026 poster, Between Here and There?
TC: The foundation of my work is the idea that Black is a beautiful canvas. I always want to create things where people who look like me can see themselves. With this poster, I was thinking about what imagination actually looks and feels like when you’re reading a book. You’re physically here, but your mind is somewhere else entirely. I wanted to visualize that world. The figure is a Black woman surrounded by color and vibrancy because Black women love books, love learning, love imagination, and they deserve to be seen in that space.
DA: Tell me about your personal artistic challenge to create a poster each day. Are you still engaging in that project?
TC: I started the poster-a-day challenge to sharpen my design skills while I was still growing as a photographer. It was purely for fun. I still make posters when I can, though life looks different now with two kids, two businesses, and client work. What I love about it is that there’s no brief. It’s just me, my thoughts, and the beauty I want to put into the world. It’s therapeutic. I get to create freely and know that someone who looks like me will see it and feel something.
DA: I’d love to hear a bit about Coker Studio and how you and your wife collaborate and inspire one another.
TC: Coker Studio is a creative playground for my wife and I to make the things we want to see in the world. Afritina does photography and set design, and she’s been expanding into floral work too. For me, it’s graphic design and art direction. We did the For the Lovers jacket together, one of our best sellers, and she’s my creative director on pretty much everything. Every project I touch, I show her. Her feedback makes the work better.
DA: You have Nigerian roots. How does your background influence your work?
TC: I’m from the Yoruba Tribe, born and raised in Lagos, and our culture is deeply colorful. At every event, whether it’s a wedding, birthday, or naming ceremony, you see bold color, rich texture, woven fabric, each family in their own color scheme. And when you zoom out, all of it comes together in this harmonious way. That’s where my eye for color comes from. There are also shapes, symbols, and layered meaning built into the culture, and I carry that into my work too.
DA: Which artists have had the biggest impact on your work, and whose art do you turn to for inspiration?
TC: My faith is the foundation. I genuinely believe God is the original creative, and I’m pulling from that. Beyond that, my wife, Afritina, for her amazing taste in style, art, and composition, Basquiat for his storytelling and the way he worked within his own rules. Picasso for Cubism. Van Gogh for being raw and unapologetic. Dalí and Frida for surrealism, which is where my poster work started. But I also pull from musicians. Robert Glasper and Fela Kuti have both shaped the way I think about expressing yourself across different mediums. That’s why I call myself a multidisciplinary artist. I still play keys, still design, still shoot. It all feeds each other.
DA: What do you like to read? What books have really captured your imagination lately?
TC: I love books about habits, investing, and self-reflection, and occasionally fiction. I’m also dyslexic, so audiobooks are my preferred format. The last one that really pulled me in was Sacrilege: Curse of the Mbirwi. The sound design, the different voices, the texture of the narration, it transported me completely. That experience of being taken somewhere else while you’re listening is exactly what I try to create in my own work visually.
About Temi Coker
Temi Coker is a Nigerian-born, Dallas-based multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of photography, design, and storytelling. Rooted in his Yoruba heritage and guided by the philosophy Black is a beautiful canvas, his work celebrates Black identity through vivid color, bold imagery, and visual narratives that showcase beauty & Power.
