Sacramento’s communal art scene on full display at Chalk It Up festival

Veronica Tate was busy Sunday morning. With AirPods in her ears and chalk in her hands, Tate was busy creating art on a sidewalk outside Fremont Park.

Still, she was happy to stop everything and talk with passers-by about her work. That’s the nature of the Chalk It Up art festival. Artists were still busily hovered over their creations Sunday morning as passers-by strolled past in shorts and sandals. The festival runs through the end of Labor Day.

The event is as unpretentious as it is communal, Tate said. And that’s kind of like the Sacramento art scene in general. Whether it’s the huge murals or public sculptures in DoCo, the Sacramento art scene is best viewed outdoors, and the Chalk It Up festival has a special place in artists’ hearts.

“We’ve got big names coming through for free and we get things like this,” Tate said. “I did this event back in 2017 and it was like my favorite thing in the world. I absolutely fell in love with it. I was like, this is home.”

Home on Sunday was expected to be quite hot. That’s why artists were out early, trying to finish their work before the blazing heat fired up.

Teenagers Ileana Naihe, 14, and Sienna Morris, 13, had a plan to beat the heat. The artists put up a blue shade to sit under, with a guitar sitting underneath to strum on when the time came. Morris has been participating in the festival for years – her father is one of the organizers – and says the sense of community is incomparable. She remembers an artist messed up her creation at a festival a couple of years ago and a group of artists pulled together to help her make an entirely new picture at the last minute.

Morris’ creation of a person looking out a rainy window was complete Sunday morning. Naihe was still working on her picture, an orange triangle floating in the galaxy. The color orange made sense, Naihe said, because her square was sponsored by Silver Orange, an indoor rec room for teens and tweens interested in the arts in East Sacramento.

“I really like how everybody can come together here,” she said. “The community comes together. I’ve met a lot of friends here. And I just think that’s amazing how people can come together through this.”

Part of that is because the event is open to anybody. Passers-by can simply walk along the perimeter of the park, taking in all the art. Or visitors can get into the park itself, where vendors were setting up Sunday to hawk everything from soap to paintings to french fries. A covered beer garden awaits those trying to beat the heat. The festival officially runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday and Monday but organizers encourage anybody to visit at any hour to check out the creations.

And if you see an artist working on something, don’t be shy about asking a question.

“There’s a huge sense of community,” Tate said. “I feel like once you start doing or going to a few art events, you start running into the same people, and you realize that oh, we’re actually mutual. And we know a lot of people within the scene and then also a lot of the artists have this just general understanding of supporting other artists. So everyone’s really supportive of artists creating and that’s what makes this an awesome community.”

This story was originally published September 4, 2022 at 9:15 AM.