See drone video of amazing chalk art at 2023 Lake Worth Beach Street Painting Festival

LAKE WORTH BEACH — The drawings chalked this past weekend on Lake Worth Beach's busy main drag are ephemeral. Cars, bikes, dog walkers and rain will, without malice, smear and smudge and dissolve what artists spent the better part of two days under cloudless skies creating.

But the tributes to the Disney heroines of "Frozen," and Al Pacino's Scarface, and whimsical sea turtles and great white sharks and Kermit the Frog, and skulls of the apocalypse, aren't meant to last forever. That's one reason they are so special, and why thousands of admirers strolled Lake and Lucerne avenues for the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival.

"You get used to not having an attachment," said Kumpa Tawornprom, a professional sculptor from the Tampa area whose 3D vision of a carpenter bee done in sweeps of tempera paint was a favorite Sunday at the festival. "That's just part of it, no attachment."

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The Lake Worth Beach Street Painting Festival is in its 29th year and is considered one of Palm Beach County's main winter events. Of an estimated 600 street painters this year, 37 were professional or "featured artists," including Tawornprom, whose 3D bee was sponsored by Discover The Palm Beaches.

Many works were completed by Sunday afternoon but some artists still toiled in 85-degree temperatures or stayed with their work to answer questions and show people the best vantage point for photos.

"I want to make people happy," said Tawornprom, who had marked three spots to best photograph his bee. "That's the idea of being here."

The show is not a competition, there is no winner or loser, and most artists are not pros, although some aspire to be.

A trio of students from the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts worked on a boldly colored chalk drawing of three flowers growing out of the same pot, each with a different face and surrounded by vibrant purples, deep reds and bright yellows.

Yamilly Fariña, 16, Taniyah Aris, 15, and Stephanie Taffe, 15, called the work "Flower People."

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They said the biggest challenge was the heat and using chalk on asphalt. Oil painting, charcoal drawings and photography are more their speeds.

"Working with colors on this kind of surface is different for us," said Taniyah, who expected the work to take a total of eight to nine hours.

"Even the high school paintings are good, which is impressive," said Jeff McLaren, a West Palm Beach resident and regular Street Painting Festival attendee. "There are going to be a lot of great artists coming out of these schools."

The festival, which was started in 1995 by a group of volunteers, took a year off in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it was held online that year, part of the experience is interacting with the artists and learning their stories.

Forest Hill High School student Laura Phillips drew a chalk image of her favorite music artist, the late singer Selena. Laura, 17, has cerebral palsy and is legally blind but her portrait closely followed the photo she brought of Selena for inspiration.

It was Laura's first time drawing a person. Last year she did a chalk drawing of a mansion on an island.

"It is hot out but the real challenge is the blushing in her face," Laura said. "I'm trying to get the lines perfect."

There's no rain in the forecast through at least Friday, but the cars, bikes, and dog walkers will, unfortunately, besmirch those perfect lines. At least until next year.

Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County's Lake Worth Beach Street Painting festival 2023