CHUCK LIDDY - chuck.liddy@newsobserver.com
Megan Milot, left, and Mary Cain work on their chalk drawing as friend Christopher Woedy, back, provides the tunes on Fayetteville Street as the SPARKcon festival continues Raleigh, N.C. on Friday Sept. 16, 2011.
RALEIGH -- The real power of chalk art – like that now blossoming over several blocks of Fayetteville Street as part of the SPARKcon festival – is in the fleeting nature of its charms. Kind of like youth.
“Vote for us!” said 17-year-old chalk artists Megan Meilot and Mary Cain to everyone who stopped to watch the pair chalking the outlines of a giant, dreamy portrait of a young woman.
Rain threatened, raising the possibility that there is a such thing as too temporary, even with chalk art. Meilot and Cain, though, didn’t seem concerned. The two girls and their support team of three other teens were clearly having a moment that, whether they knew it or not, would stick with them.
Meilot, whose default expression is a winning smile, had black chalk smudges on her cheeks and was wearing a knitted cow hat, complete with horns and ears. Her ensemble also included turquoise socks with rings of color, baggy plaid pants and a single, fingerless blue glove. It did not include shoes.
Cain wore Ugg boots and a pink fingerless glove. Beside them, Christopher Woedy, 17, sat in a red canvas chair and strummed a soundtrack for the moment, some Jack Johnson, a little John Mayer. Alexis Davis, 15, chalked out a sign seeking cash contributions (all the chalk artists were given jugs to collect change; whoever collects the most gets to keep it, while the rest goes to the nonprofit Visual Art Exchange gallery and incubator). Brendan Durr, 17 – the team chauffeur – had inexplicably wandered off awhile, then drifted up again.
“Towel!” Megan cried to Mary in that tone surgeons use when demanding a scalpel.
The five teens, all from Green Hope and Panther Creek high schools, were assigned square number 110 . They were among 280 artist teams that had signed up for a six-foot-by-six-foot square of pavement. More than 100 were frantically at work Friday afternoon. If their work survives a rainy weekend, they’ll be judged Sunday afternoon, the last day of SPARKcon, in six divisions: junior high, high school, college, adult, family and team building.
Normally they have until Saturday night to finish, and one of the many must-dos during SPARKcon is walking among the artists as they work. This year, though, with the forecast for at least periodic light rain on Saturday, organizers decided to let the artists work right up until judging starts at 1 p.m. Sunday, said Erika Corey, an organizer for the street art, which this year also will include a single, massive work by the students of the Art Institute of Raleigh and Durham.
Rain and chalk art aren’t automatic enemies, Corey said. If there’s only a little, as forecast, it could actually make the chalk easier to work with, she said.
“Quite a few have already made a lot of progress, and I think Saturday there will actually be a lot of really incredible stuff to see,” she said
Of course, too much rain could turn the work into watercolors. As showered arrived Friday evening, most of the chalked squares were covered in plastic. At square number 110, the teens had brought tape and garbage bags to shield their work, but they took the possibility of rain about as seriously as teenagers take mortality.
“If the rain erases it, we’ll come back and do it over, really quick,” Mary said.
“I will come back and draw, like a fiend, like a mad cow,” vowed Megan.
Christopher laughed and kept strumming the soundtrack to their moment.
