Chalk festival - The Lardner Report

(Pic #1) The perfect set. Who knew? Josh knew.

Embrace what’s taken away.

As an artist, you know the inspiration can come from anywhere. But you have to be open to that inspiration, and sometimes, the preconceived notion we have about a piece, can actually stifle that. Last weekend I had finished painting a couple of new jackets and wanted some creative photos of them.

(Pic #2) Our newly-recruited model “Ainslee” helped bail us out.

Typically, on Memorial Day weekend, we often head to Santa Barbara for the day to check out the i madonnari chalk festival at the historic Mission. So the idea struck me, how cool would it be to get shots of me (or preferably a model) wearing the jackets against the backdrop of all that quirky, colorful pastel street art. So off we went. Unfortunately we arrived early Saturday morning, so most of the artwork had not been completed. No great backdrops to shoot against. That plus the fact — that with so many people walking around — a clean photo was going to be hard to get.

I stood on the steps of the Mission looking over the courtyard where all the chalk artists labored, and knew with absolute certainty that this was a wasted trip. I had the picture in my head, I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like, but there was no way to make it happen. Time to go home. That’s when my husband said, “Hey knucklehead, turn around.”

So I did. And suddenly I was facing the front of the mission. He pointed and said.. “Go pose against the wall.” The pink pillars, the texture of the whitewashed stone were stunning. So we shot there. I even found a model in the crowd who agreed to help us out. I love these shots, even though they were nothing like what I had envisioned.

I had closed myself off to other possibilities because I was locked into that one “ideal” image. Josh wasn’t, so all he saw were opportunities. So here’s the lesson I hope I learned: knowing what you want to create beforehand is a good thing. Thinking it’s the only thing worth creating can prevent you from seeing extraordinary possibilities.

(Pic #3) Ainslee duet, courtesy Photo Shop.

(Pic #1) Sketch by iconic French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. So much more interesting this way.

The underpinnings can tell us so much more….

There’s something about seeing how an artist works, why he chooses a particular line, and when he decides that’s enough. I love watching them create, or even catching signs of their intentions by what’s left for us to see. Sometimes I try to peel back the layers, and occasionally, they do it for me.

Check out the Lautrec piece above. That mid-section never needed to be painted. Those scratchy marks — all sketchy and loose — make the painting even better. They kind of let the viewer know how the artist saw his subject, and let us in on that very personal view. I like that his art seems to sit there for a moment in time, in its raw form, letting us finish the strokes or the color that he never added.

I felt the same way at the recent Italian Chalk Festival in Santa Barbara this week, when artists from all over the globe began their works in pastel on the hot mission pavement. They were all given two days to complete their 4 x 8 squares, but I couldn’t help but hope they would never finish.

(Pic #2) Technically incomplete — this is a way cooler art experience. Il Madonnari (the annual Santa Barbara Italian Chalk Festival)

(Pic #3) Pastel illustrating the benefits of leaving parts untouched. The lack of form in the bottom half of the blacktop asks the viewer to literally “fill in the blank.”