Check out my progress - Downtown Little Italy Festa, San Diego 2013: Today, this festival brings over 120,000 visitors from all over the country - from all over the WORLD – to celebrate in the country’s largest Italian homecoming. I wanted to honor this event and dug into the history and found out that 1913 was the year where the US experienced the largest wave of Italian immigrants. Upon this research I came across this old vintage poster:  This image captured the history behind this enormous wave of immigrants and decided that I would chalk it up. But of course, given its vintage postcard/poster feel, I paired it up with a golden frame. I arrived early saturday morning and after a good cup of italian coffee, I opened up my new box of 48 chalk pastels, and started the grid. I continued chalking until the sun went down…   I called it a day and continued early Sunday morning. It's the best feeling to wake up and walk only 2 blocks to the festival through all the vendors that are setting up shop. Your piece always look so different when you stumble across it with a fresh glance and the early morning sun shining upon it.  Within a few hours, the street filled up with live music, fresh calamari, I snuck in a few cannoli breaks….You have to try the freshly made cannolis the pastry shops make. But had to quickly get back to work if I wanted to finish on time…but I had a little companion the whole time. A little butterfly always flew around me and kept landing on my piece. It was always very close - and probably confused the bright colors with some kind of flowers - but it seriously kept close to me the entire day.  This bright little creature always faced my way. There was just something about this bright little bug….So I continued in my zone and kept filling in every inch with chalk. After 15 hours of saturating the street with chalk - I was ready to say "Finito"! Definitely a piece to be proud of and a great way to honor all italian immigrants that came to this country. Can't wait to attend this festival again next year. For more information on this event, click on this link: http://www.littleitalysd.com/events/little-italy-festa/   (8'x8' | Medium: Chalk | Rendition of Vintage Postcard)See you at the next Chalk Festival! -Lesley "Bam-Bam" Perdomo |
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