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Despite a slow start to its process of signing up artists, the popular Chalk It Up art festival will return for its 36th outing on Labor Day weekend, according to the festival’s executive director Christy Jourdain.
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A post this week on the Sacramento sub-Reddit questioned if Chalk It Up was happening this year. Someone posted on the popular website that they’d been watching the festival’s website “and normally artist sign ups and sponsorships have been open for quite a while at this point.”
There is no cause for concern about this year’s festival, Jourdain insisted. She explained that Chalk It Up had gotten a new sign-up platform and that they’d been testing it with an engineer and artists. “That’s been a real lift for our small but mighty team of volunteers to take on,” Jourdain said.
The free chalk art festival that has run in Sacramento since 1991 and will next be held Sept. 5-7 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day at Fremont Park.
She anticipated that sign-ups would go live through Chalk It Up’s website on Friday evening.
What ‘Chalk It Up’ is
The festival began as a six-hour event scheduled for Sept. 2, 1991 as “a street-painting festival modeled after the 17th century Italian tradition,” according to The Sacramento Bee. It was initially called Chalk It Up to Sacramento and hosted at what was then called Plaza Park on I Street between 9th and 10th streets.
Chalk It Up has grown into a three-day extravaganza at Fremont Park and a defining cultural event for the city. It attracts artists like Greg Berger, a graphic designer, who do works to benefit charity. Berger estimated that he had been participating in Chalk It Up for approximately 15 years.
“It’s probably my favorite weekend of the year and I just love the event itself,” said Berger, whose drawings for the event benefit the Sacramento Children’s Museum. “You’re out there for a couple days and everyone’s walking by. You get to talk to them about the organization that you’re drawing for.”
Berger added, “It’s a good way to be out there doing art and then having people see you actually do it.”
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The event is not just about chalk art. Shawn Peter, founder of the band Ghost Town Rebellion, said he’d been sponsoring the festival’s stage, helping its sound engineer and providing his band’s equipment for use during “Chalk It Up” for many years.
Asked why “Chalk It Up” had been around as long as it had, Peter said that the festival had “always stayed true to its original message.” He also noted that the event was free and supportive of music and art programs.
“I look forward to it every year,” Peter said. “It’s a high point in my year.”
A special part of this year’s “Chalk It Up”
This will be the first Chalk It Up held since the death last September of Charles Thomas, the midtown artist better known as Ground Chuck.
Thomas attended last year’s event even though he was in hospice at the time and less than a month from dying. His friends made art for him at the event.
“He was directing them and then he would go back and forth with his scooter between the stage and square and then he actually performed with a band,” his friend Linda Perry told The Bee then.
Jourdain said that a tribute to Thomas was in the works at this year’s Chalk It Up. While she was keeping specific details under wraps, she said there would be some grant funding given out in Thomas’s name that had been earmarked for art programs at schools.
“A lot of our team have been around for a long time and in the local music scene and stuff,” Jourdain said. “And so ground chuck has been a familiar face to a lot of us since the ‘80s.”
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If you go
What: Chalk It Up art festival
When: Sept. 5-7, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
Cost: Free
More information: chalkitup.org