Sidewalk Arts: The Joy of Creating 

Written by Alexa LoSchiavo. Photography by Sarah Hill.

Hands smooth over a chalky blue; swirl around a bright yellow. Chalk moves like paint and blows in the wind. It’s the time of year where the heat hangs heavy and the sun beats down. Still, people hunch over the sidewalk and still, people flock to the park and observe the festivities. 

It’s the Sidewalk Arts Festival again. 

This annual event is a gorgeous testament to the creativity of SCAD students. A perfect example of our artistic community and the joy that art brings to so many. The event was teeming with people this year, hunched over on the sidewalk with chalk-stained hands painting their assigned square and moving through the crowd. To walk through all the people felt like standing on a people mover, watching the artists draw and slowly moving along the long line of people watching. 

Everyone stopped at every square to look at the artists working hard in the heat. Some had big sections of squares, laid out like a jigsaw puzzle, with each artist sectioning off a specific piece. Some had only one square, making the most of their tiny space with gorgeous colors and designs. Some clubs got a square too, using their chance to make their mark on the ground they’d walked over so many times. 

This festival showed the unique creativity of each student, each square full of a unique design, each square a piece of the students personality. There was a Yoda in stark detail, parrots and frogs, Art the Bee as Lorde, Art the Bee in a field of flowers, colorful patterns, colorful stories. The whole park was filled with color and chalk. Stepping through each design transported you into a new world of the student’s creation, a world without bounds. 

The festival highlights the unique opportunity SCAD gives its students; an opportunity to create without limits, to explore their mediums and to do so in a joyful way. Of course we have our intense classes, our rubrics, and our rules but that all falls away with events like this and students get to explore their creativity in a new, unique, and beautiful way. They get to go back to the basics, when we were all kids drawing with chalk on the sidewalk, creating things out of thin air. Sidewalk Arts brings us back to that unique feeling, the feeling of chalk on your hands, sun in your eyes and the satisfaction of a job well-done (just because you had fun and made so many people happy).  

The sidewalk isn’t just a place to walk anymore, it’s a place that breathes life and inspires, thanks to the many artists this Sidewalk Arts season. We hope you enjoy these pictures of the joy this festival brought so many, look through your favorites, and use them for inspiration. Inspiring you to bring joy into your art like all these students drawing their designs with just chalk on the sidewalk.