HAMILTON — Sidewalk chalk can be a fun activity for kids and adults alike, and an annual tradition in Hamilton brings all artists together for a friendly competition.
The Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest from Explore the Arts kicked off Daly Days in Hamilton. Artists of all levels competed for a prize of $500 from the Bitterroot Art Guild.
Barbara Liss, managing director for Explore the Arts, says although it’s only the second year doing the contest, she’s happy to see so many people participate.
“This is the second and we are exceeding expectations," she says. "Of course we set the bar higher than last year, and we are exceeding that. And we’re so excited because it was raining at 8 o’clock, but people were here even in the rain getting their chalk.”
Participants picked up their chalk and registered for the event starting at 8 a.m. on Friday. They had until 6 p.m. to finish their pieces before judging began. The winners are announced the next day.
The event had three categories for the contest: families and teams, youth and adults.
There were some competitors who had years of experience in chalk art, like Sara Stanford, who worked with chalk for 10 years in California.
She was forced to take a break during quarantine, so she is happy to have an excuse to get back into it.
“One of our friends who helped us, like host us, when we first got up here before we found a place to move, she’s been sending me all this stuff about Hamilton and downtown and all this stuff and I get super excited about it and when I saw chalk I thought oh my gosh, it’s been years. Absolutely, sign me up,” Stanford says.
During COVID, she focused a lot of energy into art and drawing with her daughter, so she’s glad to be with her in public again.
“All we could do is draw, and I had all these chalk pastels in the garage, and I got my kiddo out to play,” she says. “And for a long time I wanted to take Luna, my daughter, to the Pasadena festivals, but then with the lockdown and everything, and just logistics, it just didn’t work. So it’s kind of cool to have her here.”
Other participants have less experience, like 8-year-old Brecken, who entered the contest so he’d be able to draw on the downtown sidewalk.
“I love to do art, and I thought it would just be really cool to draw with chalk, right here,” he says.
And some used the opportunity to promote their business or non-profit, like Anita Wotkyns, who entered the contest as a team with several of her daughters. She is working to open a children's museum in Ravalli County.
“With this children’s museum project that is just starting, we thought this would be a really fun way to promote the new non-profit that we’re starting,” she says. “So we’re doing that to kind of just promote it and start to raise some funds.”
Part of their piece will be a scan code, drawn with chalk, to lead people to a donation portal.
Andrew Kilian is a local artist who has done a few chalk artworks around the city already, and was the man behind the promotional drawings for last year’s chalk art contest.
Originally from New York, Kilian found his love for art through his mom, who worked with pastels. While he shared her passion for art, he hated chalk growing up. His plan was to work as a comic book artist.
“But they said, you’re so good at drawing, why don’t you come down here and work with some chalk, and I’m like, okay,” he says.
His distaste for chalk wasn’t the only thing Kilian had to let go of to become a chalk artist. As a perfectionist and a lover of realism, he had to learn how to accept the style of art chalk would give him.
“The thing with chalk is, you don’t get a realistic pallet,” he says. “It’s always going to look sort of pastel. So you take something realistic, and then you work with the chalk, and then all of a sudden… it just explodes off of the ground.”
The artists experimented with a variety of techniques, including using water as a blending medium. They also covered their finished pieces with hair spray to increase the longevity.
All of the chalk was donated to Explore the Arts by Mainstreet Toys in Hamilton, and each participant received a bottle of hairspray donated by SK Barber.
On Saturday, a non-competitive chalk event will be held.
