Chalk art is really too timid a description for what will be happening this weekend at Cerritos Towne Center. Chalk art on steroids is more like it. Or maybe even masterpiece theater.
Using the pavement as their canvas, 10 Southern California chalk art wizards will work their magic, conjuring giant anamorphic snow cones you can “sip” from and three-dimensional sharks that appear to crash through the sidewalk.
The first-annual Chalk it Up festival is just the latest guest to Southern California’s booming street art party. But while chalk art is having a moment, it isn’t new. And it didn’t start with hopscotch on a playground either. The art form dates back to the 16th century in Italy.
Itinerant artists, who called themselves Madonnaris, used the ground as their canvas to render outsized copies of Old Master paintings, turning streets and public squares into art galleries. The popularity of pavement art faded over time but in the early 1980s it began to make a comeback in art student circles.
About that time, a guy named Kurt Wenner left Santa Barbara to study classical figurative art in Italy – and found himself caught up in the revival. He did his first pavement painting on a street in Rome. And a few years later he became the first American to win the esteemed Grazie di Curtatone chalk art competition, earning the title Master Street Painter.
Wenner then took the art of pavement painting up a notch. Inspired by the illusionistic paintings on Rome’s baroque ceilings, he writes on his website, he devised a geometry formula to create 3-D pavement art.
In 1986, the National Geographic Society made a documentary, Masterpieces in Chalk, about Wenner and his work throughout Europe.
Following in his footsteps, today’s top 3-D pavement painters churn out anamorphic masterpieces that make you think you are staring into a pool of water or down a cliff or up into a cathedral tower.
On Saturday you can watch several of the chalk artists create their own 3-D illusions.
Lorelle Miller will make a giant snow cone that, when seen through a camera lens, will look like it is upright and has a straw sticking out. Visitors can snap a photo of themselves “drinking” the snow cone – and then post it on social media, of course.
Miller, who lives in Santa Clarita, has a job as an illustrator and graphics manager in the biomedical industry. On weekends, though, she travels the increasingly busy chalk art festival circuit. She has been paid to fly as far as Norway and Vancouver to do pieces. After Cerritos, she will head to Venice, Florida, where she will work with a team of artists to create a 3-D pavement painting, a virtual botanical garden maze.
“Street art is blowing up right now,” she says. “I think it has to do with the fact that it’s accessible to the public and it’s in front of you, not behind closed doors. You can see the artists working.”
Pomona artist Gus Moran will be sketching a shark that will appear to leap straight out of the sidewalk.
“I’m going to make it look like the ground is busting open,” he says. When you look at it through a lens, that is. When you look at it on the ground with the naked eye, it will appear longish, out of proportion. “It’s kind of a math equation,” he says. “You have to figure out.”
Moran gravitates to pop art. Picasso and the Brazilian artist Romero Britto are his influences. He just got back from a festival in Reno, and after Cerritos is headed to Atlanta.
“Street art is getting huge,” he says. “A lot of people aren’t exposed to art … they come here and see beautiful art being made right in front of them.”
And then vanish.
“It’s like a weird type of performance art,” Moran says.
The pieces at the Cerritos festival will be power washed on Monday morning so you have until Sunday evening to see them.
“It’s ephemeral, like when you sing or act,” Miller says. “It’s just that moment. You just have to learn to let go with this type of work.”
Moran snaps photos of his pieces before he says goodbye to them. And he makes prints and postcards to sell. His full-time job, though, is in materials management at City of Hope.
Long Beach artist William Zin works in the freight industry. Zin, who was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Japan, came to California State Long Beach when he was 21 to study fine art. He found it tough to earn a living though and set aside his passion. It wasn’t until 2007 when he had three months off work following a double bypass that he started drawing again.
In 2009 he tried his skills at a chalk art event in Belmont Shore in Long Beach.
“I was instantly hooked,” he says.
Now he travels to up to 20 events a year: Atlanta, Houston, Victoria.
“It’s a little adventure,” he says.
Mostly he likes to do portraits, often of indigenous people. Reproducing old masterpieces is also fun, though. He has copied two Caravaggios for festivals, both in Carlsbad.
On Saturday he plans to sketch a 3-D koi pond scene with various critters to appeal to the families he hopes will come watch.
“We are there to have a conversation, hopefully promote more art and inspire younger generations,” he says.
A space will be set aside for festival visitors to test their talent.
“There’s usually hundreds of kids doing their own little thing,” Moran says.
Zin gives social media a lot of the credit for the growing popularity of art in general. People are sharing photos of art they create, as well as art they visit, whether in museums or on the streets.
