One of the major highlights of the weekend was the annual Chalk Walk, which is part of the Dogwood Arts Celebration. It features a competition in various age and professional categories and runs all day on Saturday. Artists begin first thing in the morning and stop at 5:00 for judging. I wasn’t able to find the winners listed online, so I’ll leave it to you to judge the quality of the drawings.
Given that I had company all weekend, I only had two chances to take photographs. The first was during the afternoon on Saturday. Unfortunately, the artists were not finished and the crowds simply would not allow for good photographs. I heard several comments about the size of the crowd being larger than anyone remembered. Much like the night before, it was hard to walk through the square.
The next opportunity I had came the next morning between 10:00 and 11:00 AM. The largest of the crowds had dispersed, though marathon runners passed through the square while some were gathered to cheer them on. A large brunch crowd had assembled, but they mostly kept to the patios. The worst element I had to deal with was the fact that the paintings had degraded a bit. Some of it was natural, though there were foot prints and tire tracks, as well. There were also shadows across some of the paintings, but there was nothing I could do about that and some of the names had been removed, so I can’t identify all of the artists.
All in all, I would judge the quality of this year’s drawings to be a bit better than last years, though perhaps I’m forgetting some of the better works from a year ago. You can look at past years drawings here: 2012 2012, Part Two 2011. Actually, now that I’ve linked to and looked at some of the previous years, it’s hard to say. Certainly, this year’s event featured many fine works. And they had the most perfect weather I remember for any given year.
So, enjoy these photographs and tomorrow I’ll post another batch. This has to be the most vibrant time of year for Knoxville and I’m loving the start of this fun season. Don’t miss it.
