The Pasadena Chalk Festival is back live and in person on Father’s Day Weekend, with some 500 artists from all over Los Angeles and the West Coast joining together at the Paseo for the live art happening.
Artists are coming from as far as New York and Texas, filled out by contingents from Washington state, Oregon, Utah and Nevada, to create their art in real time on the pavement under the open sky, also creating excitement for throngs of people who’ve missed the Pasadena Chalk Festival for the last two years when the premiere art event – a Guinness World Record holder as the largest public art event of its kind – was forced to virtual because of the pandemic.
“What’s going to be interesting this year is what artists have been doing the last two years, creating art in their studios while COVID has been terrible on so many fronts for so many people,” Patricia Hurley, Managing Director of the Light Bringer Project, said.
“The people who needed time to create in the privacy of their studios, they had a lot of time to do that during COVID because they couldn’t go out and they couldn’t interact with people. So a lot of us stayed indoors and made art, because it made them feel better. So I think the artwork is going to really blow people away. I think it’s going to be really stunning this year.”
There are no entrance fees to go see the Festival. The crowd mixes mingle and meanders starting at 10 a.m. on on Saturday and Sunday June 18 and 19. The chalking wraps up at 10 p.m. nightly. The Paseo is located at 280 East Colorado Blvd.
“Everybody finds something to love at this festival,” Hurley said. “There are so many murals that something attracts everybody. And it’s so accessible. People can just walk right up to the art and look at it. They can walk right up to the artist and ask how they’re doing, or ‘what are you doing’ or ‘how did you make that?’ You never really get to talk to artists like that.”
Hurley said Pasadena being a City of art and culture for over a hundred years is one reason why the Pasadena Chalk Festival is special.
“Ever since the city was founded, we’ve had this history of artists in the Arroyo. We’ve had the Norton Simon museum that initially was called the Pasadena Art Museum, the first contemporary art museum on the west coast. We have Caltech which actually had Baxter Gallery (closed in 1985), we have ArtCenter College of Design, a world recognized design school, and we’ve got The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. So Pasadena is really a place of riches when it comes to the arts.”
Aside from hundreds of chalk artists converging at the Paseo, the Pasadena Chalk Festival will also feature live music from bands like Taylor Plenn, the Carlos Ordiano Trio, Rhythms of the Village Family Band, Spaghetti Cumbia, Lucas Heaven, and La Güera Chakaloza.
It will also include a Bazic Kidz Land, where children can experience the essence of the Chalk Festival by creating their art on Bazic Products’ chalkboards, join arts and crafts activities, and play a game of cornhole.
The Pasadena Chalk Festival started in 1993 after a summer intern at the Light Bringer Project brought back pictures from a street painting festival in Paris. The first edition was called Chalk on the Walk and took place at Centennial Square in front of City Hall.
In 2010, the Festival made it to the Guinness Book of World Records when over 600 participating artists used over 25,000 sticks of chalk and drew a crowd of more than 100,000 visitors in one weekend.
To learn more about what to see at the Pasadena Chalk Festival, visit www.pasadenachalkfestival.org and www.lightbringerproject.org/pasadenachalkfestival.