3d Street Painting – 2010 Sarasota Chalk Festival

It was going to be Halloween weekend. Add a street painting festival to the equation and what do you get? Spirited artists, incredible street paintings and a whole lot of fun!

That was the 2010 Sarasota Chalk Festival, the 3rd annual, held in Sarasota, Florida and it promised to be a shining star in the 3D street painting festival firmament. It did not disappoint. Billed as an international event, Denise Kowal and team, managed to bring together some of the best and brightest of the street painting world – from all over the US, Canada, Mexico, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. What a treat! Not only did I get a chance to actually meet in person some of the folks I’ve know for the last few years on facebook, but I was able to forge new lasting friendships while painting with these talented folks at this event.

I had wanted to create a 3D interactive image that would be playful, inviting and large, in that it could accommodate more than a few participants. Believe it or not, while doing laundry one day, Mouse Trap, the game popped into my head as a possible theme. Why not make that into a street painting? I had seen and fallen in love with the awesome ‘OK Go’ videos on YouTube using Rube Goldberg-esque mechanical devices and thought how cool it would be to create my own homage to one of my favorite games as a kid: Mouse Trap!

Knowing this piece would require some serious manpower, with limited time available to create the painting, I recruited my friends and/or fellow street painters Sharyn Namnath, Charlene Lanzel, Julio Jimenez and Fred Wilms to assist. Everyone loved the theme and was excited to see this materialize on Pineapple Street in Sarasota. In keeping with the Halloween theme, we came up with the plan to dress in costume as mice, who were running the show, while we invited the humans to participate at their own risk! It was all in good fun & everyone played their parts hysterically! I’m sure the viewers enjoyed the show as young and old lined up throughout the weekend to see the ‘game’ first hand.

Details about the painting:

Some viewers got that there were 2 separate perspective planes designed into this image – a device I created to give the illusion of vertigo when participants stood on the game board.

I used an actual 1963 version of the Mouse Trap game as a reference for this painting.

Team: 5 artists

Schedule: 3.5 days to complete

Size: 65′ x 30′ (approx. 20m x 9m)

Materials used: Eternity Arts & Koss International chalk pastels;  tempera paint (all non-permanent)

Thanks to the city of Sarasota for creating a wonderful venue for the street painters. Congratulations to all the participants on a tremendous job! Gratitude to my amazing team and especially to Michael Moore for photography and video assist!