35th annual Chalk It Up turns a Sacramento park into a colorful festival

Around 200 artists have transformed Fremont Park into an explosion of chalk pastel color this weekend as part of the annual Chalk It Up festival.

Amanda McDonald, an art teacher at El Camino High School, beamed as she put the finishing touches on her sidewalk square, a Godzilla-sized mural of ET hovering over the Tower Bridge beneath a purple sky.

McDonald brought two cadres of students to work on two more squares created by El Camino students. That spirit of inspiring young people to create art is what Chalk It Up is all about, said John Nelson, a volunteer with the festival and one of the organizers.

“Not only do we create an educational experience for people here at the park, a lot of these kids we’re putting a piece of chalk in their hand and they’re doing it right next to pros that are awesome with their chalk,” he said.

While the festival draws around 35,000 people over the three-day weekend and has become a bona fide festival with a music stage and food trucks, it also has a charitable mission. “The net proceeds benefit youth art education. We give out grants to teachers who are doing things in the local community,” Nelson said.

Chalk It Up has come a long way since its fledgling beginning in 1990. It’s also dealt with challenges along the way. There was no festival in 2020 because of COVID-19. Instead chalk art appeared throughout the city.

Today Chalk It Up draws aficionados from around the country.

Kathleen Bowen, who traveled from Salt Lake City, said she has been doing chalk art since she was 16. . When she is not at her day job at a biomedical firm, Bowen creates chalk art at festivals in Florida, Oregon and South Carolina.

“My style is always neon. It’s usually ridiculous,” Bowen said. “In South Carolina this year, I did an octopus terrorizing a pirate ship with a sock puppet.”

For her work in Sacramento, Bowen described her sidewalk mural an “Uber Snail giving a frog a ride.”

It features several colorful mushrooms as well. “Everyone is on a mushroom craze these days,” she said.

Bowen said that one of the challenges of Sacramento is that the space is tightly packed with artists and people attending the festival.

“That’s really the only downside to Sacramento. But everybody seems nice. I love a free festival. I like that anybody can try it… it encourages new artists.”

As temperatures soared to 100 degrees, abstract artist Rick Young needed a hand up and water as he arose from his knees upon the completion of his chalk art creation.

A professional artist, Young at 71 is having his first Chalk it Up experience.

“I might be the oldest artist out here,” Young said.

Despite the challenges, the artist said he found the experience inspiring. “Often, as artists, we can’t get our works in the scene unless we go through a gallery,” Young said, adding, “Here, everybody gets to see the art free, and it’s a way to bring community together at a time when there are so many divisions.”

One artist attending the festival was all business as he finished his creation. Nestor Mendoza has hundreds of thousands of views of his complex 3-D chalk art on TikTok. At an invitation-only sidewalk art walk in Cary, N.C., last weekend, Mendoza created a jarring and playful work in which leaping fish appeared to have cracked through the sidewalk.

Asked what he was working on for Chalk It Up, Mendoza said he did not have time for an interview, explaining only that his clearly science fiction fantasy-inspired mural would be finished by noon on Monday.

This story was originally published August 31, 2025 at 4:06 PM.