“It’s raining cats and dogs,” JD tells me, mainly because there are so many paintings of them that feature cats and dogs at this year’s I Madonnari chalk art festival at the Santa Barbara Mission.
JD is John Danner, a retired San Francisco fire fighter who comes down each year with his family to enjoy the festival. He’s become a good friend and compadre when it comes to photographing the paintings.
Over the three days of the festival we spend time together experiencing the art it emerges, talking with the artists, sharing a beer or two and meeting old friends who, like us, migrate back each year to celebrate what for me is the real beginning of summertime.
Tuesday morning is a particularly poignant time for both of us. We’re out early, just after 6 a.m. and before the sun comes up over the Riviera hills.
They’re just a few out there giving us quiet time to meander through the paintings, photographing the art from our perch on the ladder I’ve brought with me.
It’s also a time for us to assess the paintings and to reflect back on what we’ve experienced over the past three days.
It’s hard not to want to judge the paintings or to determine who we feel were the best of the artists but over the years we’ve come to understand is that it’s the creativity and the love that goes into these them that makes them special — and that we’re not there to judge them, but to honor them.
Cats and Dogs
I agree with JD that despite the amazing variety of subjects chosen by the artists that the cats and dogs stood out.
One of these that we both can’t take our eyes off is that of a beautiful rainbow-colored cat lying on its side and looking as content as possible. It’s a painting that has been done by three young women — Violet and two Annas sponsored by La Cumbre Animal Hospital.
Another is amazing painting of “Gumbeau,” the dog fully immersed in the water in pursuit of a tennis ball and completely involved in the moment. The painting is by Mariah Quintanilla, an artist from the Sacramento area.
To a certain extent this is both the sense of the excitement and exhilarate exhilaration that comes with the chalk art festival each year, and the talent of young artists who come to share their experiences and their love of art with the community
JD & I
JD & I only see each other once a year, a tradition that has brought us together for the past 15 years or so with the exception of several of the COVID years. JD is from the San Francisco area and he is a retired firefighter who I’ve learned an amazing amount about how the work firefighters do.
For me the relationship with chalk art has been far longer, dating back to the late 1980s when in 1988 world renown chalk artist Kurt Wenner visited my wife’s class at Roosevelt School to introduce her second grade class to the use of chalk as an art form.
For many years I would photograph her class’s entry at the Mission and beginning in 1998 started serving as an unofficial photographer of the event.
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday morning is a particularly emotional time for both of us. For one, it is the first time JD & I will be able to walk around and get the full experience of what the artists have created. The other is that in a few hours we’ll be saying goodbye.
It’s a quiet time as compared to the jostling crowds of the past several days. I make a quick stop at the Daily Grind for coffee and a muffin then get to the Mission as JD is just cruising in.
First impressions begin to develop as we walk through the aisles separating blocks of the chalk art paintings from one another. Several friends walk by and ask me which I like best. It is tempting to give an answer. If I were to pick just one I know exactly where it is.
Amazingly it is located just across from the entry to the Festival but to the right of the water fountain where it is easy to miss. I call this the “Tree of Life.” The painting is by Ella Rozhko and I find it absolutely amazing.
Next to it is another incredible painting titled “Happy 20th Kylie Grace,” by Dr. Jessica Kennedy. A technicolor version of lion, it too deserves equal recognition.
A Need to Resist Judgment
It’s when you walk further in that you realize the problem. There are dozens of other paintings that are also outstanding. Once upon a time JD & I would try to solve the problem of whose paintings were best by just picking out the 10 we really, really liked but trying to avoid focus on any one of them.
The last few years we’ve found it difficult to pick just 10. Last year we stopped counting when we got to 20. This year we didn’t even try.
I think we’ve come to understand that it’s the creativity and the love that goes into these paintings that makes them special and that we’re not here to judge them, but to honor them.
Building a Tradition
On the Friday before the festival begins I sit down on the Mission steps with Kai Tepper the executive director of the Children’s Creative Project to talk about the I Madonnari Festival. CCP serves thousands of students from more than 80 schools in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties with a focus on the transformative power of the arts.
“While CCP is much more than I Madonnari,” Kai tells me. “For the community the Festival is now what you might call a part of the Santa Barbara legacy.”
Kai is a graduate of the Santa Barbara High School’s Visual Arts & Design Academy and locally at California State University Channel Islands. “I’m 36 years old and the Festival has just reached it’s 38th year.
“It is truly a generational kind of event,” she says. “Kids in the in second and third and fourth grade who were experiencing a Madonnari for the very first time in several decades ago are now grown adults sharing it with their children.”
Meeting New Generations
Having been involved with I Madonnari for so many years it is easy for me to understand how powerful the tradition of the festival has become.
Along with my goodbyes to JD, we give hugs to a number of the artists who’ve become friends over the years.
“Goodbye, see you next year” is the common refrain. That there will be a 2025 Festival is a given.
Imagining a Memorial Day weekend without I Madonnari is an impossibility.
Tepper pauses for a moment. Just to our right and below us the featured artist Emily Lostaunau is at work on her “Sunday Grays.” Others are chalking the outlines of the paintings they will begin work on tomorrow.
“While the festival has been around for long enough time that it’s now an integral part of the community,” she adds, “at the same time traditions and foundational things change.
For various reasons now is the time to start looking at and reevaluating how I Madonnari can better meet the mission and goals of CCP as well as the community.”
The New Reality
Part of this is the reality that things change over which CCP has no control. Kai explains that the cost of almost everything relating to the festival has skyrocketed, from food, to fencing and tables, to booths.
“Nor does the public understand how much staff time is involved in making the festival happen,” she says. “All they see is what you might call a ‘pop up’ experience with everything in place on Saturday morning and gone by Tuesday afternoon.”
There are also other factors. It appears the Mission will be adding a number of handicap accessible parking spots in the area where the paintings occur that could impact the event. Increased costs also means less money raised for CCP as well.
Nor would finding another location for I Madonnari be easy.
Tepper tells me that there is so much more the festival could provide to connect the students served by CCP with it if there were more space. But figuring out how to make that happen is difficult.
Re-Assessing the Festival Mission
In a recent interview with “The Giving List,” Tepper noted the importance of providing ways to empower the Santa Barbara community as a place for young artists and creative people from all backgrounds.
Finding ways to build upon that theme in the CCP programs and into the festival would be a powerful way to do that.
Another is building the I Madonnari Festival around sponsorships that promote this type of diversity. That might include mentorship programs that link some of the established professional artists who dominate the larger squares with talented young artists in the community.
It will be interesting to see how all this develops. We both agree having the festival is a given. How it meets these challenges is still unknown.
