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the end of Saturday, day one, we got a lot of chalk on the ground...twice!
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Ah, the annual Denver Chalk Art Festival! What an amazing event, 13 years in the running. I was able to participate again this year, which marks my fourth or fifth year chalking it up. Many of my local artist friends have been showing up every year, but this was the first in about 5 years that I had volunteered my chalking efforts on the streets of Larimer Square.
I was told by one Larimer Arts Association member that approximately 100,000 people would walk the streets and get a viewing of over a hundred amazing examples of temporary chalk art over the weekend.
The annual chalk arts event in Denver runs for three days. We would have started outlining our works on Friday June 5th, had the weather in Denver not been so very wet.
So we waited (we being the Laurie Maves Art team of myself and my eldest son, Forest) until Saturday June 6th to get started on out 8'x8' reproduction of one of my 2015 paintings called,
"Venus and the Ponte Vecchio"
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| detail of Laurie Maves' 72"x72' mixed media painting on canvas, 2015. all rights reserved by the artist |
Below are some photos of the weekend's process, including the untimely downpour at 3pm in the afternoon, which inevitably washed away over 80% of what Forest and I had gotten on the pavement in the prior 6 hours of work.
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| 9 am on Saturday morning |
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| just about noon on Saturday. Forest at work |
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| and then the rains came at 2pm |
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| and this is what remained... |
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| by the end of day one |
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| venus detail day 2, Sunday June 7, 2015 |
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| after a day's worth of hustle I was able to complete the image Forest and I started |
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many thanks to our square sponsor, the band, Something Underground
When all was said and done, even with the rains and all the back-breaking, knee-crunching work, the image came out beautifully. I am so grateful for the assistance of my son on day one. What a great way to spend 8 ours with a fabulous child. I am also most grateful to have had the opportunity to work next to a longtime artist colleague and dear friend, Eric Matelski. Eric was the guy who said to me over a decade ago, "If you can chalk live, you can paint live!" and my life changed from then on!
For more information on the annual event, visit the Larimer Arts.org website |
