It was a wonderful and an exhausting weekend in the city. Rhythm and Blooms permeated downtown venues with music from Friday through Sunday. Pianos were placed on Market Square for spontaneous music. Nikki Giovanni read her poetry at Union Avenue Books and on the Market Square Stage. I got in on a little of all of that, but I’ll start the week’s posts with the other major event downtown: The 2012 Chalk Walk, which is part of the Dogwood Arts Festival and spreads more color around Market Square and Krutch Park than at any other time of the year.
For those of you who may not know what a chalk walk is, I’ll give a little explanation. Students, families and professional artists reserve spots on the concrete and spend two days making their best chalk art. The work is judged in various categories on the second day and awards are handed out accordingly. Time pressure bears down on the artists as they try to make sometimes elaborate works and complete them by the deadline.
This year featured a little additional pressure in the form of a deluge that fell just before noon on Saturday washing away several hours of work for many of the artists. Some went home, but most persevered and the results were great, as always. I’ll do very little further commentary as this is an event in which the photographs speak for themselves. I’ll have more tomorrow as this event is just too big and too photogenic to limit it to one post.
In most cases I remembered to get the name of the artists, but in others I did not and I apologize to those artists. I did catch some of the works in progress and I’ve included both the work-in-progress and the finished product to give you a little feel for the fun this event offers in terms of seeing the artists at work. I did not see who won the awards, but I’m sure you can find that list elsewhere and I’m confident you will see the pictures here.
