The Victoria International Chalk Festival wraps up this weekend with a two-day exhibition of a half dozens artists’ work. Government Street will be closed to vehicle traffic this weekend, September 15-16, 2012, so chalk artists from around North America—including Victoria’s own Ian Morris— can create their ethereal masterpieces along the city’s tourist boulevard.
I’ve always wished I had a talent for drawing. The work I produced in my elementary and high school art classes was mediocre at best. Yet I could count on my mom to showcase my efforts on the refrigerator door, and to this day she has a trunkful of my childhood art projects in her basement.
So I get a peculiar feeling in my gut when I watch truly talented artists create masterworks in chalk on the sidewalk, knowing their work will endure no longer than the next rainfall. Sure, they take photographs. But if you had the skill to create something this downright wonderful, wouldn’t you want it to *last*?
Chalk artist Jeanie Burns at work on a piece of street art.
The least we can do to honour their work is to come out and watch them create it. Stop in at the downtown Bay Centre, too, to see the astonishing 3D image Tracy Lee Stum has been chalking onto the floor there all this week.
