April 2024

Well, April was a productive month! I finished my submission for the Trashion Show in Long Beach, and even got to have professional photos taken of me wearing it. Love how this project turned out. Might make myself another one just for fun. 🙂 We had a chalk butterfly on the walk for most of April; now I’m working on something for Star Wars Day, but those photos will need to wait till next month’s report. It’s nice to be doing bigger chalk again, now that the weather might be more reliable. Jake and I finished another instagram series; we found about 20 places we can walk/roll to (so, all within 2 miles of home, and not impossible to reach by sidewalks), that have outdoor seating and food Jake can eat (usually breakfast or dessert items). Also I wrote about thirty more new Wikipedia articles, mostly women in health-related professions.

March 2024

Another pretty productive month for making stuff, despite a lot of weather (in LA, but how?). I chalked a square of my front walk, loosely inspired by a self-portrait by Mabel Alvarez (1891-1985). I worked on an ensemble for Amy Bauer’s Trashion Show in Long Beach in June, mostly using holey stained or otherwise undonatable t-shirts in various ways, assembled with sewing and crochet. More on that as it develops, but I can post an in-progress photo of one piece now. I started about 30 new articles for Wikipedia, focusing on folklorists, Francophone writers, educators, and Ukrainians, for various Wikipedia events.

A Sampler for the New Year

I’ve participated in four previous Fun-a-Day LA events, and I’m participating in Art.Happens, this year’s virtual Fun-a-Day LA. I’ve done two crochet projects, one garment-making project, one Wikipedia-and-collage project, and now, chalk art. For January 2021, I made a chalk alphabet on my front walk.

A is for Avocado, Arrow, and Ant… and so on.

This was actually done in two segments; I finished A through N before we got a big rainstorm, then it all washed away. I redid M and N, and continued to Z, finishing on January 31. Nell helped me with stitching the two segments together to make one seamless photograph.
Here’s what the walk looked like during the rainstorms:

Rain delay! But also pretty.

More Lockdown Chalkdown

Three more chalk art projects on our front walk, from September, October, and November/December. There was rain right after Christmas, so we’ll be starting something new for the new year.

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  Late September: RBG

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  October: Halloween theme

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  November/December: Birds

Lockdown Chalkdown

We’ve spent a lot of this past six months doing chalk art in front of our house, because there aren’t any chalk events this summer, and because it entertains the neighbors, and because it’s surprisingly therapeutic. Here are some of the chalk drawings we’ve done so far, since mid-March.

Chalking Belmont Shore 2017

October is a busy image-making month, with Halloween and the Belmont Shore chalk art contest. This was my piece for this year’s Belmont Shore event. I based it on an Alphonse Mucha soap ad* from 1898, loosely. Then in the second half the day, I asked anyone who stopped to talk, “What’s your grandmother’s name?” That was the source of all the names written into the image. It was fun to hear their stories! People seemed very excited to see their dear one’s name included. I didn’t win a thing (never do!), but it was a fun day as always.
*Original was very similar to this one:

Five Years, Same Panels, Redondo Seawall

Nell and I have been doing chalk art at the Redondo Seawall for five years now–always on the same panels, more or less, at the beginning of the walk.   A retrospective:

2015 (yesterday; see better images of the individual panels at ipernity):

Nell did the one with wings, I did the other three.

2014 (we were in a hurry, only stayed a couple hours, had to go to a bar mitzvah that night in Temecula; so I didn’t get one photo with all three panels, but you can see 2-3-4 in these):

Chalk art at seawall, 2014.

Nell doing chalk art at seawall, 2014.

Chalk Gollum-ish character 2014.

2013 (there were two events in 2013, we chalked the same squares at both of them):

Nell did the one with wings, I did the other two.

Nell did the one with wings, I did the other two.

2012:

Nell did the one with flippers, I did the other two.

There’s a time-lapsed video of me working on panel 4 that year.

2011 (our panels weren’t all in a row that first year, so there’s no one photo for them; Nell did the NintendoDS, I did the other three):

Chalk Blackside Hawkfish 2011

Surreal Seascape, 2011.

After Edouard Manet, 2011.

Nintendo DS with accessories, 2011.

 

1st Place, Family Division!

“Frida Underwater” Chalk Art , originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca.

Nell and I were part of a Chalk Art Festival at Redondo Pier today–and we won 1st Place in the Family Division! About $100 in gift cards from restaurants, and a whale-watching trip for two (to be used in the winter). Our 6×6 square was titled “Frida Underwater,” and I have to say it was a big crowd favorite. I think we must be in a hundred families’ vacation photos after today. We heard oohs and aahs in various languages; it was especially nice to hear parents take the opportunity to tell their kids about Frida Kahlo being a famous artist from Mexico.

But now I’m a little sunburnt, and my left pinkie is on strike. Still, very fun day. We’ll definitely do it again next year.

UPDATE:  Here we are in the Beach Reporter; here I am in the Daily Breeze, also here.