Luna Park Chalk Art Festival

October 10th, 2009 @ 9:55 PM Art, Events, Family, Northside, San Jose

Sharyn Chan Namnath and Andrea Johnston painted this chalk mural, sponsored by the 13th Street Cats rescue group.

Today the Luna Park Business Association hosted the second annual Luna Park Chalk Art Festival in Backesto Park. At least a couple of dozen artists got together to paint sidewalk murals with chalk and pastels. The artists ranged from chalk art festival circuit riders Wayne and Cheryl Renshaw and well-known local muralist Paul J. Gonzalez, to enthusiastic high school and elementary school artists.

Meanwhile, accordionist Mike Zampiceni and dancers from Movimiento Cosmic Aztec provided entertainment, and North 13th Street restaurants served refreshments. The event drew plenty of visitors, and there was always a crowd admiring each of the artworks.

The Renshaw’s work was particularly fascinating as they used computer image manipulation to create an image with proportions adjusted to look natural when foreshortened by viewing from an angle. Viewed from most directions the image is distorted and surreal, but viewed from directly below their soccer playing figures become surprisingly lifelike and almost seem to stand out from the sidewalk.

Soccer player mural by Wayne and Cheryl Renshaw

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4 Comments so far

Cheryl Renshaw (unregistered) on October 20th, 2009 @ 9:03 pm

Hey, thanks for the blog about the festival! Excellent description of how we skewed the soccer player image so that it popped up when viewed from the proper spot. It’s hard to tell from that photo, but those kids were about 12 feet tall!

The two artists painting the pair of cats are Sharyn Chan Namnath and Andrea Johnston. Sharyn came up from Santa Barbara and Andrea came down from Davis for the festival. That’s Sharyn in the photo.

Best wishes,
Cheryl
Matt Bruensteiner (thephoton) on October 22nd, 2009 @ 7:26 pm

Cheryl, Thanks for letting us know those names! I’ll update the article.
Robert My Brands (unregistered) on October 26th, 2009 @ 4:52 am

by the way: do you know julian beever? he is one of the greatest artist in the field of street-art. he is painting absolutely crazy things absolutely realistic. you have to check this out! since i know him i am absolutely crazy about 3d street-art! thanks for the nice pics!!
Cheryl Renshaw (unregistered) on October 26th, 2009 @ 9:21 am

Thanks for the update, Matt!

I know of Julian, but since he works mostly in Britain and Europe I don’t know him personally, Robert. Wayne and I are friends with Tracy Lee Stum and Rod Tryon, two other fantastic 3D street artists, though.

http://www.tracyleestum.com/
http://www.artforafterhours.com/1102_RodTryon.html

Cheryl