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Glad to be Back in 2022: Cleveland Museum of Art's 33rd Annual Chalk Festival!

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Stuart O. Smith, Jr.
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Cleveland
Art
University Circle
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Cleveland Museum of Art
Chalk Festival

Cleveland Museum of Art's 33rd Annual Chalk Festival
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To Read Details of CMA Announcement to Members

Chalk Festival

Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11, 12:00–5:00 p.m.
Fine Arts Garden

Children and adults enjoy this annual event where community members join professional artists in using the walkways around the Fine Arts Garden as a colorful canvas. Begun in 1990, our festival is a modern expression of a Renaissance tradition from 16th-century Italy in which beggars copied paintings of the Madonna by Raphael and his contemporaries using chalk on the plazas outside cathedrals. Watching the chalk artists and enjoying the entertainment is free.

I was so glad to be back in person after two years!! In 2020, for the 31st annual Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalk Festival, the event went virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, "I was very disappointed that a spur-of-the-moment trip south to take care of some family business prevented me from attending ... cryingcryingcryingcryingcrying" but "I was rewarded greatly by the Cleveland Twitterverse," who posted their photos online so that I was able to share them in my blog post:

I was so pleased that the 33rd Annual Chalk Festival would take place in the Fine Arts Garden on Saturday/Sunday, September 10 and 11, 2022, rain or shine! These were dates I could attend!!

 

The following is my eleventh Cleveland Chalk Festival blog post. I really enjoy seeing the creativity each year (which is why I even wrote blog posts for the two years I enjoyed remotely). I invite you to view all my my past "Chalk Festival" blog posts from 2012 - 2021 after you look at the photos in this blog post. Please retweet any tweets that have photos of chalk artwork you enjoy to encourage more people to attend and participate in future years!

 

Announcing the Cleveland Museum of Art 2022 Chalk Festival

The Cleveland Museum of Art Hosts 33rd Annual Chalk Festival

Two family-friendly days to enjoy sidewalk art inspired by Italian Renaissance tradition

Cleveland (August 9, 2022)—The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) will host the 2022 Chalk Festival, an annual event started in 1990, this year expanded to two days, Saturday, September 10 and Sunday, September 11, noon to 5 p.m., rain or shine. The festival features sidewalk artistry by professional chalk artists and local community groups, families, and individuals, all using the CMA’s south plaza and walkways that wind through the Fine Arts Garden and down to Wade Lagoon as a colorful canvas.

The Chalk Festival is a modern expression of a Renaissance tradition from 16th-century Italy in which beggars copied paintings of the Madonna by Raphael and his contemporaries using chalk on the plazas outside cathedrals. This year, Chalk Festival’s featured artists include Héctor Castellanos Lara, Wendy Mahon and Oliver C. St. Clair, and the community is invited to take part in a chalk-drawing masterpiece and make it come alive with color. 

Squares and boxes of chalk are available for $10 with on-site, day-of registration (supplies limited). No advance reservations will be taken. The Chalk Festival is free to visitors wishing to enjoy the artists’ work and listen to live music in the garden.

Here are tweets from before the September 10-11, 2022, Chalk Festival announcing the festivities!!

 

The following is Polly Karr's (@karr_pe) tweet she made after reading my September 1, 2022, tweet about the 2022 #CMAChalkFestival.

 

 

 

Day #1: Saturday, September 10, 2022 - 33rd Annual Chalk Festival

 

 

Unless I am participating by doing my own chalk drawing on the first day of the festival, I normally only come on Sunday (day two) to get photos of the finished chalk drawings. This year, I saw that the weather forecast for rain Sunday morning dictated that I come on Saturday night to capture photos of the first day's drawings.

Note that before I visited the Chalk Festival in the early evening Saturday, I had already visited four other fun places in Cleveland that day. If you open the first tweet that follows, you can see photos of my day at:

 

@PokoTraveler learned about the Cleveland Chalk Festival 2022 because of my tweets. See below the great video and photos @PokoTraveler shared when he visited on the Monday after the event weekend!!!

 

 

Great to have an online conversation with Polly Karr (@karr_pe) about the "baker chalk art" and plans to visit.

 

 

Beautiful gardens in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

 

 

 

Day #2: Sunday, September 11, 2022 - 33rd Annual Chalk Festival

Cleveland Museum of Art hosts 33rd Annual Chalk Festival
Sep 11, 2022 3News' Lindsay Buckingham visited the 33rd Annual Chalk Festival in Cleveland.

The 2022 Chalk Festival returns to the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) in September, this time over the course of two days!

The Chalk Festival, which started in 1990, returns to CMA on Saturday, September 10 and Sunday, September 11. The event will take place from noon to 5 p.m. rain or shine.

Professional chalk artists will be on hand to dazzle with their talent as the walkways of CMA's south plaza through the Fine Arts Garden and the Wade Lagoon will be available for all to lay down their own artwork.

The Chalk Festival is free to all visitors who wish to observe the artists at work and listen to live music in the Fine Arts Garden. Squares and boxes of chalk will be available for purchase for $10 on either day of the event. No advanced reservations will be taken by the Museum.

Here is what the Cleveland Museum of Art says about the Chalk Festival:

"The Chalk Festival is a modern expression of a Renaissance tradition from 16th-century Italy in which beggars copied paintings of the Madonna by Raphael and his contemporaries using chalk on the plazas outside cathedrals. This year, Chalk Festival’s featured artists include Héctor Castellanos Lara, Wendy Mahon and Oliver C. St. Clair, and the community is invited to take part in a chalk-drawing masterpiece and make it come alive with color."

On Sunday morning it rained, so I was glad I took photos on Saturday. It was interesting to see how the first day's chalk drawings were still there, but the colors were muted by the rain. What was also even more interesting was seeing how many new, joyful, chalk drawings had been created since the morning rain. So many people come every year to this annual Cleveland Chalk Festival! I enjoyed seeing the contrast between the muted artwork and the new, bright artwork that made up the colorful collage on the stone pathways in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

I really appreciate how the following people shared on Twitter the chalk drawings that they enjoyed. I was able to attend in person this year, but for those that can't get to the museum, I think it is great to share with the world on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are my 85 photos of chalk drawings I saw and photographed on day two. Incredible, new artworks created! In addition to retweeting your favorites, please look for and share by retweeting the special message about voting!! Thank you!

 

Important Message in Chalk Artwork!
Make a plan to VOTE!!!

Learn more by following @CuyahogaBOE (Cuyahoga County Board of Elections) and @CuyahogaBOEESP (Enespañol@CuyahogaCountyBOE - La Junta Electoral del Condado de Cuyahoga) on Twitter, and see their website at: https://boe.CuyahogaCounty.Gov/

 

 

I really loved how this drawing used the shape of the sidewalk stone in capturing the beauty of the water fountain.

 

 

Here is an example of before-and-after-the-rain photos of the baker that I shared with @PokoTraveler. @PokoTraveler ended up coming on Monday to see the chalk drawings in person -- see his great video and photos below!!

 

 

 

New Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection Banner

Sun, 09/11/2022 to Sun, 01/08/2023

This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary gift and promised gift of art made by Clevelanders Joseph P. and Nancy F. Keithley to the Cleveland Museum of Art. In March 2020, the Keithleys gave more than 100 works of art to the museum—the most significant gift since the bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. in 1958. 

The Keithleys’ collection focuses on Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern European and American paintings. . . .

On Friday, September 9, 2022, the day before the Chalk Festival, I was invited to the Media & Influencer Preview for the Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection exhibition that opened to the public on Sunday, September 11, 2022. As I was leaving the 2022 Chalk Festival, I saw that the banner by the back entrance had been updated to announce that the exhibition is now open.

I had brought my dad to the preview, and we were amazed by the collection -- it includes a lot of the type of art I enjoy. I plan to return to see The Keithley Collection exhibition again -- hopefully more than once.

If you are interested in seeing some of the exhibition, please open the second tweet that follows (or click here to open preview tweets in a new window). I will tell you that my photos don't do the artwork justice -- you really need to go in person to see for yourself.

Click on the following tweet to see my photos from the preview:

 

 

More Photos and Video from 33rd Annual Chalk Festival

Great video by City Dogs Cleveland @CityDogsCLE of the creation of the portrait of adoptable Jarvis!

 

Photos From the Cleveland Museum of Art's 2022 Chalk Festival
By Emanuel Wallace
CMA's annual Chalk Festival is a popular late summer event that draws (no pun intended) hundreds of artists to the Museum grounds near Wade Lagoon to create chalk masterpieces. Here's what we saw.

If you do a search for "@MannyWallace" in my past blog posts, you will see many results, since I often enjoy his work. Be sure to follow Cleveland Scene photographer Emanuel Wallace on Twitter at @MannyWallace to see his photos about what is happening in Cleveland -- he is the man in the know for Cleveland fun.

Emanuel Wallace shares all his photos from the 2022 Chalk Festival in his online Cleveland Scene slideshow:

 

Poko Traveler
Description
I love exploring the many things to see in Cleveland, Ohio and Salt Lake City, Utah, but there are also many unique sights I share from my travels to cities across the United States. Most of my videos have a walking tour vibe to them, as I narrate what I'm seeing. The name "Poko Traveler" stems from a portion of my name and my hobby for traveling.

Thank you, @PokoTraveler, for the great photos you shared on Twitter and your video from Monday, September 12, 2022, with the results of the Chalk Festival. I am glad you learned about the 2022 Chalk Festival from my tweets, and mentioned in your video that you hope to participate next year with your own chalk drawing.

Learn more about Poko Traveler on his YouTube Channel at: https://www.youtube.com/c/PokoTraveler

See his video and tweets -- be sure to share those you enjoy by reweeting:

 

 

 

I follow 5,000+ interesting people and organizations, so Twitter now prevents me from following more. When I first saw the great photos that @PokoTraveler was sharing, and that he had followed me on Twitter, I was not able to follow back. Luckily, I recently gained some more followers, so the "Twitter police" let me follow @PokoTraveler on September 21, 2022. It is my understanding that I still need more people/organizations to follow me so that I can continue to follow more interesting Twitter accounts.

 

Related Blog Posts

For this my eleventh Cleveland Chalk Festival blog post, I want to thank all the creative people who participated in the weekend event, and also thank those that shared what they see on Twitter for the whole Twitterverse to see. The chalk art created at the Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalk Festival every year is outstanding!

Please take some time to see artwork from the past ten shows by reading my blog posts:

See more by reading my 53 "CMA (Cleveland Museum of Art)" blog posts, or 67 "University Circle" blog posts.

At last count, there are 82 other blog posts tagged "Art!"

Thank you for reading my blog post. You can learn about my travel journeys with my wife and co-blogger, Julie, and the venues we explore in Cleveland and Akron at: sosAssociates.com/Blog