Spring Arts Festival weathers first year

Strong wind gusts made applying chalk to pavement more difficult in the Chalk Walk Street Painting Festival, and some of the exhibitors' tents in the ArtsCape Fine Arts & Crafts Street Fair resembled parachutes at time, but the first ever Spring Arts Festival dodged a rain forecast to draw a moderate-sized crowd to downtown Cape Girardeau Saturday.

The festival, held to celebrate the grand opening of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri's new galleries, was sponsored by the arts council and the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau. It was held at the parking lot next to the Boardman Pavilion, where musicians performed throughout the day.

The festival also included the Arts for All program, which enables people with disabilities and people who aren't disabled to create art alongside each other.

In addition, two dance performances were presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University.

To be a Chalk Walk artist requires a willingness to walk around with a smudged body and to spend most of the day rubbing a slab of pavement with colored chalk. Having something to rest your weary knees on is a good idea. Murphysboro, Ill., artist Inga Silver rolled up her pants to display her daughter's rollerblade kneepads.

Silver's business, called Artist for Hire, is painting murals. Her current masterpiece, a view of the world, is at the Williamson County Airport in Marion, Ill. Saturday she drew a rear view of a human brain because she just had brain surgery.

The drawing, titled "Your Brain on Art," also fits her plans to become a medical illustrator.

The approximately 30 chalk artists included a group of Central High School students who recreated the famous image of Marilyn Monroe battling an updraft. Katie Williams, Michaelyn Burns and Amber Branson weren't sure why they chose Monroe to immortalize.

"It was either that or Lucille Ball," Williams said.

A number of the artists chose to recreate works by masters like Picasso. Some preferred the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

Brad and Leslie Davis and their 7-year-old daughter, Shannon, came from Jackson to make a family outing of the competition. Shannon and her mother drew a SpongeBob while her father tried to recreate the abstract cover art from a CD by the jazz band The Crusaders.

None of the artists seem to mind that their creations are destined to blow away eventually or to be washed away by the rain.

"It's a liberating feeling to do something that eventually is going to be part of the atmosphere," Silver said.

80 people, two dogs

The 20 dancers in "Site Works: Dance on Tour" performed for an audience of about 80 people and two dogs on the cobblestones of Riverfront Park, east of the floodwall, Saturday morning. The aging Mississippi River bridge next to the new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge under construction provided a symbolic backdrop for Josephine Zmolek's "Sphere of Influence," a dance that asks the audience to question old ways of thinking.

The dancers performed "Site Works" again Saturday afternoon before about 50 people at the River Campus.

More than 15 people participated in the Arts for All program, in which devices attached to a wheelchair enable people to create art. Only two of the 15 who participated have disabilities. The others wanted to see how the device works, and perhaps something else.

Amanda Rozmirsky, 11, of Delta., Mo., wanted to make some art, but she also wanted to see how it feels to be in a wheelchair. The art part was fun, she said, but life in a wheelchair could be trying, she imagined.

The artists begin by creating designs on foam, which are glued to cardboard and then put on a roller that is attached to the wheelchair. Images are created when the artist in the wheelchair rolls across the 15-by-30-foot paper canvas on the asphalt, releasing tempera paint onto the roller. Individual pieces of paper are used as well.

Miki Gudermuth, executive director of the co-sponsoring Southeast Missouri Alliance for Disability Independence, said the Arts for All equipment is available to schools and nursing homes as well.

Nona Chapman of Cape Girardeau was selling the art she makes from gourds, a business she calls Out of My Gourd. Daniel Lilienkamp of St. Louis sold digital photographs printed on paper he makes himself through a time-consuming process that took him a year to develop.

"There's a lot of photography," he said. "I thought, 'How do I differentiate myself?'"

Gary Lee Gromer sold toilet paper holders, coat racks, towel bars and other items he makes from horseshoes at his Crooked Creek Art Studio in Marble Hill, Mo.

"People with horses are really interested," he said.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182