Via Arte, a celebrating of fleeting art, continues through Sunday

Oct. 21—It was day one at the Via Arte Italian Street Painting Festival and already artists were hard at work perfecting their Objet d'chalk.

More than 100 artists, high school prodigies and stick figure enthusiasts descended upon The Marketplace on Ming Avenue on Saturday, a healthy turnout for the annual event.

Organized by the Bakersfield Museum of Art, the event features Italian chalk art, food and retail vendors, a Via Bambino kids' art section, live music — including locally famous Mento Buru — and more.

"We actually bumped up the number of artists this year," said Victor Gonzales, curator of collections and exhibitions at Bakersfield Museum of Art.

The tradition of street painting harkens to 16th century Italy, where artists, brought in on retainer to design and decorate cathedrals, would recreate drawings of the Madonna onto pavement. This practice extended across Europe, where pauper-painters made their meager living from coins tossed from passersby, before coming to Santa Barbara in 1985, for the first street painting festival in the United States.

Since then, the practice of large, intricate chalk art has become popularized largely in the American southwest, where sparse rain won't wash away hours of work.

For 25 years, the event has come to southwest Bakersfield parking lot, drawing crowds and artists of all skill levels.

One returning face, Katrina Rocha, was selected as this year's featured artist. Like some of the more serious contestants, Rocha said she began her 10' by 14' recreation of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-1881)" on Thursday night.

By Saturday afternoon, Rocha said she was 14 hours in. Surprisingly, she was ahead of schedule.

"I really wanted to make a lot of progress so I could stop and talk to people," Rocha said. "When you're rushing to make the art, you don't get to turn around and have wonderful chitchats with people as they walk by."