An endless love

Hello everyone!

As I only post once in a blue moon, you probably forgot about me.

No complaints, constancy is definitely not one of my quirks and summer is too beautiful and short to stick to the laptop.
But sometimes things must be done, so I'm going to suppress the urge to flee outside to catch butterflies and I'll sit down and work off all the online stuff-to-do I stockpiled in the last days.

It won't last long because I'm an irretrievable metereopathic and I need to fill up on happiness in order to survive another winter, but today I feel quite confortable enjoying the sun by my window and I want to take advatage of this to show you some amazing pieces of art I photographed last weekend.

I wish I could claim all of them as mine, unluckily it would be the worst lie ever.

Still, I feel very proud of them as most of them were made by friends of mine.
I'm a part-time chalk painter and so are them (I must say I'm not this gifted, though).
We share jobs and travels in summertime and I often have the feeling to be part of a big family.

They were all painted in the span of two days in the occasion of an international chalk-painting contest that occurs every year for the past 20 years.

The drawings were made straight on the concrete, under the boiling sun, and each of them covered the space of 2x2 metres.

The lens I brought with me wasn't the ideal one, so the pictures came distorted and the paintings couldn't fit in them (that's why I chose to leave the upside down sometimes), so they actually fail to do justice to the originals.

The contest was sponsored by the church (you can tell it from some of the subjects) and the theme was: An endless love.

The artists worked very hard from friday afternoon to saturday at 4.00.
Some of them didn't sleep at all in order to finish their works before the deadline.
It was just amazing: 44 people from all over the world, all of them very tired, covered in sweat and vibrant colors, putting all their efforts in that single drawing until the last moment before the deadline.

Many of you probably never experienced street painting with chalks, so I'll tell you what you maybe don't know: after several hours bent on the floor you back hurts so badly and the concrete burns and scratches your fingertips (usually sponges and brushes are allowed, but the result is not the same). Moreover the deadline is often 24 hours after the beginning of the contest and paintings of this size require very long time, so you either do it in one go and then let yourself collapse somewhere in the shade, or you get a couple of hours of sleep at nigt and then rush back to draw till the end.

It must sound like a nightmare, but amazingly is not. It's rewarding!
The passion other people puts into their works gives you a lot of strenght and the fisical pain (although very bad) usually creates a strong sense of sharing between us.
We compete, but we also admire each other.

Plus, in our fashion-victim, super hygienist society those are the only occasions I have to walk barefoot in the middle of the street, covered in colors with ruffled hair (crazy cat lady in the Simpson saga style) without being considered a mad person.

THIS is freedom.

Chalk was the only material allowed, so they completely faded away a couple of days later.
To me this is a shame and it's part of the magic at the same time.

I believe that if you love art as I do, they will make you happy.

I hope they will :)