Perry Chalk Art Festival 2015
I had been invited to apply as a participating artist in the Perry Chalk Art Festival a little while ago. I had to submit information about myself and what I intended to create should I be selected.
It turned out that the date for the event was a weekend I had taken off of work for another event which actually wound up happening the week before. I didn’t know until Thursday that I had actually been selected to participate. Fortunately I had drawn some rough sketches up anyhow and it didn’t take long to have something drawn enough to work off of.
I had decided that I wanted to involve the Silver Lake Serpent (which is on the Town Seal) in my image. If you aren’t familiar with the Silver Lake Serpent I would suggest looking into it or see if we can talk Chris Clemens over at Exploring Upstate into doing a story on it (if he hasn’t already).
Registration started at 8am in the morning. Which means that I needed to be up before I would normally like to be. I did manage to make it out to Perry on time without injuring myself or anyone else in the process.
Registration was quick and painless. They gave me a little bag with a set of pastels, a washcloth and some nitrile gloves. 
I found my square and found out that I was sponsored by the Silver Lake Marine. 
Perfect! I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a Silver Lake Serpent themed drawing. 🙂 (If you would like to check them out they are online at Silver Lake Marine.) I then realized that I had given no thought to how to make my sketch the size of the square. When I am painting I can stand back and just eyeball it – but this was too big and I had to work at too much of an angle.
I looked around and the other chalkers were using chalk lines and grids and the guy next to me had brought a giant stencil with him. I started to panic and think that I had really gotten in over my head.
Then I heard Paul in my head making fun of me. This is chalk. This will wash off. I tattoo people for a living. They aren’t going to yell at me if my chalk drawing isn’t perfect. This is supposed to be fun. Lighten up TeeJay!
So I went for it. I put a couple of side marks to figure out roughly fourths of the size of the image so I would have some gauge if I was way off and just started chalking.
I would have continued to noodle for a really long time, but Meghan came by and said that we had about a half an hour left to work on them. I decided to call it finished. “Signed” it and went to see what else had been created. 
I have to tell you that the Town of Perry or the Chalk Art Festival Committee or whoever it is that is actually behind the scenes on this does an AMAZING job. I have been to tattoo conventions that I have paid hundreds of dollars to attend and never been treated this well. They came by periodically with ice cold water and had a couple of adorable kids that came by several times with cold fresh drinks and fresh fruit. Even had myself an nice cold chocolate milk. Haven’t had one of those in forever.
There was also a food thing going on. A Taste of Summer event that had a bunch of different restaurants and for one flat price (discounted for chalkers) you could sample foods from a dozen or so restaurants. I opted not to participate as I was concerned about the gluten thing. I did hear amazing feedback from the people who went.
Beyond this section that I took photos of, there were smaller squares set up along Main Street as well as many other vendors. The kids did a great job and I wish I had taken photos as many of the kids category pieces were crazy good.
There was live music that was GREAT the entire day. They started right around 8 and played all day.
If there was a down side at all it was only for me. The sun. Man, I am not used to the sun. Yes, I tan in a nanosecond, but I really don’t spend much time in the sun. I bought 85 spf sunblock in preparation. I truly believe this is the first time in my life I had to put sunscreen on the bottoms of my feet. Despite the sunscreen and the big borrowed hat I managed to sunburn one side of my face, my lips, the back of my neck and my entire back tanned (well) right through my shirt.
At the end of it all I won a special award for Most Original Fantasy and took Second Place overall for the Adult Division.
The Perry Chalk Art Festival takes places the second Saturday in July every summer with the rain date scheduled for the following week. I will mark them off on my calendar and spend some time between now and then upping my chalk game. Hope to see you there next year 🙂
Just TeeJay's Blog 
That is so cool, I had never heard of this festival before! Your artwork is gorgeous, congratulations on your award :-). Maybe next year bring an umbrella and an umbrella stand? The sun would have fried me too 😦
I had an umbrella and a clamp – but the only thing I could find to put it on was a jackstand and that wouldn’t have been much help (not high enough – plus I was moving around ALOT). I think that umbrella lights like we have at the shop (with the lights taken out) would work well if there was no wind. Next year I will just make sure to put sunscreen on my neck 🙂 Also the burns from yesterday are all calmed down today.