28.

Chalk Art

Over the weekend I went to the Chalk Art Festival in downtown Tucson. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a festival of artists creating chalk masterpieces on the ground outside the public library. The artists arrived early with tents and every size and color of chalk. They had all picked out a piece of art beforehand, so by the time I arrived each piece had been carefully blocked out and was well underway. The artists were down on their hands and knees, some wearing rubber pads shaped like Armadillos, all of them lost in small clouds of dust. Their clothes were covered in chalk splotches; their hands had become a solid color and many of them had chalk streaks running all the way up to their armpits. They were recreating beautiful, dramatic art. A Botticelli woman, a war general, a silhouette of a pregnant woman. Hundreds of bright colors, perfectly blended and smudged on the brick ground.

And then, in one huge push of wind, the sky opened up and sheets of water poured down on us. Sideways rain swept easily under the tents, pulling the chalk up off the ground, creating storms of color. The images went from perfect Renaissance precision, to abstract chaos, to puddles of dark, dull shades of blue.

At first, many of the artists worked through the rain, continuing to blend and sculpt the color. One man refused to get up, even after all of the other artists had abandoned their work, this man stayed on the ground, hovering over the last remaining lines. People gathered around him to protect his work, their backs soaking wet.

It was one of those things that is both beautiful and horrifying all at one—Annie Dillard watching the life drain out of a frog. All of that fantastic color streaming away between the bricks.