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Chalk it Up! I Madonnari Street Painting Festival Persists During Pandemic by Steven Libowitz

Street painting artists have been compared to masochists, in that their hobby of drawing with chalk on the sidewalk has become an obsession, back pain and sore knees ignored in a mission that is exhibited annually on the pavement in front of the Santa Barbara’s Old Mission during the I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival held every Memorial Day Weekend.

This year, of course, that endeavor had to be canceled in deference to sheltering in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic. But all is not lost. Instead the assorted artists will have to display their drive and determination to mix colors and pastels to render huge images on the ground on the driveways of their own homes.

“I love the festival at the Old Mission, but that just wasn’t possible this year,” said Children’s Creative Project Executive Director Kathy Koury, who created the festival and the concept of sponsored street paintings as a fundraiser for the nonprofit and produced the first local festival way back in 1987 after seeing a street painting competition in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy, the village where the nearly 500-year-old tradition still thrives. Early Italian street painters were vagabonds who would arrive in small towns and villages for Catholic religious festivals and transform the streets and public squares into temporary galleries for their ephemeral

Steven Libowitz has reported on the arts and entertainment for more than 30 years; he has contributed to the Montecito Journal for more than 10 years.

works of art, often of the Madonna, which gave the tradition its name.

Santa Barbara’s event – which also features three days of nearly nonstop music on a temporary stage on the lawn of the Mission’s plaza as well as food booths and crafts sales along the perimeter – has spawned similar festivals in more than 200 cities throughout the Western Hemisphere, but this year, the progenitor of the process has had to move to an online presence only. The way it works is that festival artists will use chalk pastels to transform their pavement canvases into compositions painted from photographs or their own imagination, while visitors can view the daily evolution of the street paintings on the festival website, Instagram, and Facebook by following the hashtags #imadonnari, #iMadOnline2020 and #ChildrensCreativeProject.

This year’s featured street painting – which usually occupies “center stage” just beneath the steps of the Mission – will be a reproduction of a piece by Thomas Hart Benton. The 12’ x 50’ painting will be created by longtime I Mads artists Sharyn Chan, Ann Hefferman, and Jay Schwartz, with the assistance of Emily Hefferman, in a secret location off-limits to the general public. A new “Chalk for Kids” event will let children create drawings on their own driveways – or the sidewalk, if they’re bold – and also share their creations on Instagram using #ChalkOn2020. Through the sponsorship of Village Properties, free chalk will be distributed via social distancing between 9 am and 1 pm on Saturday, May 23, at the drivethrough parking lot at the corner of State and Micheltorena streets.

Those who like to see silver linings among the clouds might consider that the ephemeral nature of chalk drawings – which are at the mercy of the elements as well as foot traffic – might be even more poignant this year as the COVID crisis has brought the fragility of our existence into the

May Day for LeMay

Festival artist Jennifer LeMay, who started street painting with chalk for I Madonnari in the festival’s second year in 1988 and has missed only a handful of I-Mads over the ensuing 32 years, is joining nearly 60 other artists in creating works in her own driveway to celebrate the Memorial Day Weekend event. We caught up with her last weekend to see how COVID might be changing her approach.

Q. So this is different, huh, doing a street painting festival from home?

A. This is very different. But at least we’re doing it. For a while, we thought that the festival would just be canceled. The prospect of not having it was sad, but then the staff at CCP came up with the idea of us doing it from home and having us take pictures, do some progress photos, tag each other on social media and post photo galleries. Everybody was like, wow, that’s a great idea. A lot of artists jumped on board and we’ve got quite a few sponsors, too. So we can still have art this year, and a festival that’s the main fundraiser for the year for CCP. Obviously it’s pared down, but a lot better than not having one at all.

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Or maybe in some ways even better: You don’t have to drive anywhere, try to beat everyone for a place to park, nobody keeps interrupting you with questions, and your snacks and drinks and some shade are just steps away.

Yeah, in terms of conveniences for the artists it’s absolutely easier. All my stuff is here, my supplies. Anytime I want to take a break I can just hop inside. But of course it’s not social and you’re not seeing people and doesn’t have the whole festival feel.

So you’ll miss the camaraderie and crowds?

Oh yeah. It definitely won’t have that same energy, and we love when people ask us questions and come by and talk with us. But we’re trying to have as much energy as we can by posting online and commenting on each other’s photos and encouraging each other as things come together to recreate that feeling as much as possible. We’ll be checking out what everybody else is doing on Instagram or Facebook and making comments, tagging people. It’s kind of like the other years when we’d be hanging out on the Mission steps at the end of the day after painting all day, we’ll be at home doing the same thing, only remotely. At least, where I live I can sort of hear the Mission bells in the distance, so I will feel a little bit like I’m there.

What’s your design for this year? Can we have a sneak preview?

I’m working from a photo I took of Matilija poppies, those really tall white flowers that are indigenous to here and in Mexico. They look like a giant fried egg. They’re in full bloom right now all over the place, and when we rode our bikes down Channel Drive toward Butterfly Beach a couple of weekends ago on a gorgeous sunny day, we saw a lot of them with the ocean in the background. I took a bunch of photos with my phone – the bright white with a yellow center against the blue ocean. There are some other red flowers in the background, too. And of course there will be a hummingbird in there, which I’ve always done over the last few years.

The image Jennifer LeMay is working from for this year’s painting

How is it to think people will only see it virtually?

I haven’t really contemplated that very much. Of course it’s always more fun to see it in person. But I’d rather do something even if people will only see it virtually than not do it at all. The real thing of course is much better. You can walk around, take a look from different angles, see the progress in real time whenever you come by rather than just when I take photos.

What about live streaming? That would be closer to reality, right?

I don’t know. Maybe other people will do that. But it’s too much to think about. You have to worry about where the camera is situated, and the lighting, and the angles. I’m going to have an umbrella because our driveway is in bright sun, and that makes the lighting really tricky. It seems like it would be another layer of stuff that’s too complicated… But I am thinking about a time lapse series if we can borrow a GoPro camera which would capture more of the process.

I heard at one point there was the thought of putting out a map so people could drive around and see the drawings, but that isn’t happening.

Yeah. The whole point was to not have people congregating. So we couldn’t do that. But I have neighbors who know I’m going to be painting on my driveway and I imagine some of them and others who walk by might

I noticed you say paintings instead of drawings even though chalk is the medium.

Some artists call them drawings but I do think of them as paintings because we’re pushing color pigments around too. There’s no liquid, it’s a dry medium. But it feels more like a painting when you’re done. But we’re still mixing colors and everything else.

One more thing before we go: I’m looking ahead to after the weekend, and I’m thinking you might be a little hesitant to go for a drive if it means you’re going to be the one to mess up your own painting this year. Sheltering in place is hard enough, right?

That’s a really good question. I was worried about it at first myself. But it turns out our driveway is big enough that I can do an 8x8’ square on the upper part by the garage door, and there’s still plenty of space in front of it so I can park in the driveway without having the car touch on the painting.

Kickin’ it with KITP

The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics has streamed more than 30 hours of videos of events by KITP’s visiting scientists since it launched the series of curated talks from its archives in mid-March. New videos are added each Wednesday, with a recent week’s interesting entries including “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive & Other Puzzles of Everyday Life” from Sam Wang of Princeton University, and “Uncovering the Nature of Dark Matter with Stellar Streams in the Milky Way” from Ana Bonaca, Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard University. The series also recently featured a talk about the science behind the infamous Montecito mudslides and debris flows – that seems like eons ago in the middle of our “new reality,” doesn’t it? – from Douglas Jerolmack, professor in the Departments of Earth and Environmental Science and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, dating from March 28, 2018.

Visit KITP’s YouTube channel to see the videos.

Ooh, oh, Gimme Shelter

In the pre-pandemic era, last weekend would have marked the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival’s 60th annual event, a downhome acoustic instrument extravaganza that is rivaled around these parts only by Santa Barbara’s own similarly-themed Fiddle Convention and Festival, which still has high hopes of holding its event in the fall. Instead, Topanga has had to migrate online, or rather make that morph, as the festival itself was canceled.

In its place, however, organizers have announced the First (hopefully not annual) Virtual Gimme Shelter Contest, a virtual performance competition that aims to keep the connections going while also giving budding performers a chance to show off their developing skills.

“Folk music has always been a way to express challenging times, and we are hoping to get through the next few months with a renewed sense of unity and strength,” the statement said, adding that the virtual event is being produced “in the spirit of folk music, and its rich history of perseverance.”

Anyone can enter, as long as they follow the rules, including recording the video during this COVID-19 quarantine and following appropriate physical distancing regulations for collaborators who are not cohabiting. “The video does not have to be fancy. We are judging your performance, and not filmmaking capability. But… if you would like, dress creatively to reflect the times. You can use pajamas, hats, hazmat suits, etc.”

Videos should also follow the guidelines of the original – read in-person – contests in the areas of music, songwriting and folk dance. There is no contest registration fee. In the truly laid-back stance of a folk festival, the rules say that the winners will be announced as soon as the categories are filled up and the judges submit their scores of the performances.

Get all the details online at www. topangabanjofiddle.org. •MJ