Yes, time to put away those Fall leaf fairies but it’s also the time of year when instead of finding presents for others, I find more for myself! On my first Christmas shopping trip in Andersonville, I found another wooden mushroom that I couldn’t resist. It was at the front of a store with many handcrafted booth spaces, but there was no information about it. Somehow, I think it ties all the other mushrooms together!
And then, on my shopping trip to Lincoln Square, I found this resin mushroom. Since at this point, I had packed up all the Fall decorations, I added it to the top of the bin and took this photograph, which doesn’t do it justice at all. I’m really looking forward to seeing it and photographing it hanging on the Fall branches next year.
And now, onto the Christmas/Winter decorating and finding gifts for other people!
I recently found two murals by the same artist on Roscoe between Broadway and Halstead.
And then one day I came across an artist painting a huge new mural on Melrose right off Broadway.
It took a week or so but it’s completed now.
It’s kind of cool the way the shadows of the fire escape and the street lamps and signs become a part of the underwater fantasy.
We went to the Howard Street Chalk Festival again this year. This festival features four of the type of 3D Chalk art that only work if you look at it through a phone camera. Here’s one that looks like it could be a trompe l’oile piece.
But here’s what it looks like from the side without the camera.
This one was really fun.
The mermaid was a bit less successful.
The pinata looked like it was jumping. The shadows under its feet are chalk. The other shadows are actual people shadows.
There were some 2D pieces by guest artists, too, as well as ones done by people who had purchased squares, but I didn’t take any pictures of them.
A few weeks later. we went to another chalk festival the I Madonnari Street Painting Festival at the Sunderland Elementary School. It is modeled after a festival of the same name which has been hosted by the Children’s Creative Project in Santa Barbara County, California since 1987. Madonnari Street painting is an Italian tradition believed to have started in the 16th century; the word āMadonnariā is used because Italian street painters would often reproduce the image of the Madonna, St. Mary.
The festival features the work of professional artists as well as the creations of students and amateur artists who are invited to purchase a sidewalk square and decorate it with pastel chalks. Proceeds benefit the Sutherland Parent Teacher Association (PTA).
This year, Liz, who I work with at the Chicago Children’s Museum, was one of the guest artists.
Some of the other guest artists were still hard at work.
When we first got there, this one featured a large mushroom but then a little bunny started appearing and we realized it was the cover of the Richard Scarry book “I am a Bunny”.
The school takes up one large block, and people were drawing on the sidewalk around the whole building – there were so many wonderful drawings!
They get sprayed with floor wax when they are done, which must preserve them for a long time because on the few squares that were not being done this year, we could see some ghost images.