Street Painting Festival‘s featured work depicts a section of artist Miguel Covarrubias’ ‘Map of Mexico’
Source: VALERIE CANTELLA FOR SANTA BARBARA COUNTY EDUCATION OFFICE
May 18, 2021
The I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival will celebrate its 35th anniversary May 29-31 with an online festival made possible by the support of sponsors. Festival artists will use chalk pastels to transform their pavement canvases into elaborate and vibrant compositions in their driveways.
Online festival visitors can view the daily evolution of the street paintings at iMadonnariFestival.com, Instagram and Facebook. Follow the hashtags #IMadonnari, #ChildrensCreative Project, #ChalkFestivalSB and #KeepOnChalking.
Chalk for Kids invites children to create colorful drawings on their driveways and share their work on Instagram using the hashtag #KeepOnChalking. Through the sponsorship of Village Properties, free chalk will be distributed, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, May 29, at the drive-through parking lot, corner of State and Micheltorena streets.
Veteran I Madonnari artists Sharyn Chan, Ann Hefferman and Jay Schwartz will team up again to create this year’s featured chalk work. They will recreate a section of Miguel Covarrubias’ “Map of Mexico” from Puerto Vallarta to the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula. The street painting in chalk pastel will be 40-feet-by-20-feet.
Covarrubias was a Mexican painter, illustrator, anthropologist, historian and world traveler. He was part of the Harlem Renaissance movement (1910-’30s), considered to be a golden age of African American culture expressed in literature, art, theater and music. Covarrubias died in 1957.
The map is part of the collections of the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City.
Chan, Hefferman and Schwartz collaborated last year on a 48-foot-by-12-foot depiction of Thomas Hart Benton’s “Achelous and Hercules.” The street painting image is featured on this year’s I Madonnari Festival poster.
Festival aficionados can enjoy a hint of I Madonnari at home with a poster, set of note cards, coloring book, or tote bag sold on the festival’s shop. A new festival t-shirt and 2021 poster also will be available. Each item features images from street paintings, and the funds raised support the Children’s Creative Project (CCP).
CCP is a nonprofit arts education organization administered by the Santa Barbara County Education Office. CCP serves some 50,000 students in more than 100 public schools in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Its mission is to engage all students in the creative process through visual and performing arts education and cultural experiences.
CCP collaborates with school districts, professional artists, and art organizations to ensure the arts are included in every child’s education, in every school, every grade, every day. During the pandemic, activities have been offered through virtual platforms. In pre-pandemic times, CCP provided:
» Visual and performing arts workshops conducted by resident artists during school hours for some 33,500 elementary students at 74 school sites.
» Presented 400 performances by multicultural touring companies for 44,400 children at 86 school sites.
» A $200 arts credit for each public school to help offset performance fees.
» A free performance by the Kingdom Choir from England, co-presented with Santa Barbara Bowl Outreach, for 2,500 elementary and secondary students.
The festival committee acknowledges festival sponsors including the city of Santa Barbara, Loreto Plaza Shopping Center, Yardi, Daniel and Mandy Hochman, Mosher Foundation, Santa Barbara County Education Office, and Village Properties Realtors.
To donate and learn more about the festival’s history, visit iMadonnariFestival.com. For more about I Madonnari or the Children’s Creative Project, contact Kathy Koury, 805-964-4710, ext. 4411.
