Street Artists Chalk Up Successful Fund-Raiser

They boasted neither the name recognition of Picasso nor the hometown of Rembrandt, but the artists who came out for the “Give Them Something to Chalc About” street painting festival Saturday in downtown Ventura produced works of art that would make the masters proud.

And they did it for a worthy cause--to help expose others to art.

The first-of-its-kind festival, on California Street between Main and Poli streets, was sponsored by the nonprofit group Arts Alive as a fund-raiser for the Kim Loucks Community Arts Project. Loucks was a local art teacher who died unexpectedly one year ago at age 40.

The festival brought out about 90 individuals and groups who paid between $10 and about $250 to “paint” a piece of California Street.

“Kim believed the process was as important as the product,” said Ed Elrod, Arts Alive steering committee member.

The daylong event raised nearly $8,000, Elrod said.

Some of the chalk art were representational pieces done in memory of Loucks, while others leaned toward the abstract. One was clearly intended as a brightly colored chalk-off of Andy Warhol’s famous Brillo boxes.

Sunday McCrory and Carl Rylander, both of Ventura, replicated the logo of a new seafood restaurant on Seaward Avenue.

Jordan Frye and his friend, Nick DiNapoli, both 10-year-old Ventura residents, added the orange face of Garfield the cat to a beer logo to come up with an entirely new product--Red Cat.

“I just put a little humor into Red Dog [beer] by using Garfield,” Jordan said.

“Red Dog by itself is not that funny,” he said.

Sally Weber and Craig Newswanger had the biggest crowd around their “anamorphic” drawing of an Asian woman in a colorful costume.

Using a piece of convex reflective material, the two artists made their piece rise out of the street.

Whether they were trying to please themselves with their work or please others, all of the chalk artists were a hit with Harry Welborn of Ventura, who walked from one end of the street museum to the other, scrutinizing each piece as he went along.

“I looked at every one of them,” Welborn said. “This was a real good time.”