Studio 310 at Raleigh's Street Painting Festival :: Sept 19-21

I'm an artist, and photography is my medium of choice. Photography is definitely my absolute favorite, but I also enjoy painting with oils, drawing with charcoal and pastels, working with metals, textiles, and clay, and probably lots of others.

On Labor Day weekend, every year, the NC Symphony gives a free concert in the Raleigh/Cary area. Recently the Pops in the Park concert has been at Koka Booth Amphitheatre at Regency Park in Cary, NC. Before the concert, local businesses and organizations set up booths with free stuff, raffles, and activities for the concert-goers to learn about each business or what they support. At the event last week, my siblings, friends, and I ended up at the sidewalk chalk activity sponsored by Raleigh's Visual Art Exchange, and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. The sidewalk chalk attraction was to give the kids something to do, as well as promote the upcoming Street Painting Festival, called groundSPARK, in downtown Raleigh.

My sis and I decided to sign up for the festival as a team of artists. That phrase "team of artists" probably makes Emily laugh because she doesn't consider herself to be an artist. (although in kindergarten, another student asked her if she had taken coloring lessons. HA) We still haven't decided exactly what we're going to draw, but we do know it's going to be very colorful and graphic.

Here's the info from the ads: The 10th annual groundSPARK Raleigh Street Painting Festival will be held in Moore Square on September 19-21, 2008. Visual Art Exchange produces the festival, which last year had a record number of artists (over 400!) chalking for an intense 27 hours and transforming Martin Street into a work of art. 10,000 visitors came to watch the artists and participate in the many creative (and free!) components of the festival including People's Choice voting, The Scrap Exchange, and KidsCHALK. This year's festival will boast additional activities including a weaving wall, Image Slam, free face painting, and even a visit from the Chalk Princess. (not sure what a chalk princess is—we'll see.)

People's choice voting means you need to come vote for our work. We'll check in as early as we can on Friday and get started on our work, but before we go back Saturday morning I'll post a blog entry about our specific location. Or you can call me whenever. We will enjoy some visitors.

Here are some images, probably from recent years, that I swiped from the various websites promoting the festival. Despite the girl in for foreground of this first image having the same hair, build, and excellent choice in shirt colors as me, that isn't me. This will be my first year participating.




sponsors, producers, supporters, presenters, or whatever you want to call the groups putting-on this event:
visual art exchange
SPARKcon
united arts
City of Raleigh Arts Commission
Jerry's Artarama
Downtown Raleigh
The News & Observer
O2 Fitness

Amanda Dengler