Chalk Festival

NB: This is my third attempt to download some images (very necessary when talking about chalk art!). First I gave up on Firefox and then went to Safari, and after another disappointing error message, I decided to log off and restart everything. So I don't have nearly as many pictures as I hoped for this post. (But I do think I was moderately successful; click to enlarge.)

In Bellingham, an Arts Festival is held early in August, and today the Chalk Art Festival is in progress. A quote from the local newspaper:

Bellingham bursts with color during the 17th Annual Chalk ArtFest. This fest gives artists and non-artists alike the ability to show off their talents through chalk. Throughout downtown, participants will be making their mark on Bellingham sidewalks.

Well! With a chance like that, I decided to take a walk with my camera and show you what some of the artists are doing. The one above shows a unicorn in progress, and this one I really liked because I thought both the puppy and her hair were sprinkled with streaks in a lovely way.

These two young ladies are drawing a psychedelic zebra (or that's how it looked to me), with beautiful rainbow colors. Almost all of the artists have something to kneel on, but these elegant and very serious artists didn't seem to need them.

Some of the art was downright, well, artistic! This copy of "Girl With a Pearl Earring" was stunning in its beauty. Just as I was taking a picture, a guy in a motorized wheelchair motored right across with no consciousness that there was anything beneath him! The artist stood there stunned for a minute, and we discussed ways to put barriers around it so it wouldn't happen again (we put towels all around the painting).
Unfortunately, the shadows didn't allow me to get the full effect of the picture for you, but you get the idea. Another thing I noticed is that many of the artists could have come from my era of peace and love. There were at least three paintings with peace symbols in them. This was my favorite: Peace-Ahh!

I had a wonderful time wandering around and taking these pictures, and then coming home and FINALLY getting this up for your enjoyment. Today and tomorrow there will be good food, music, and basically people enjoying themselves for the sunny and relatively cool weekend, here in Bellingham.

:-)