Chalk Festival is moving from Venice back to Sarasota

Earle Kimel, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
·4 min read

The International Sarasota Chalk Festival will leave Venice and return to Sarasota, where organizer Denise Kowal hopes to stage a full-scale event in 2024.

Kowal moved the Chalk Festival offices to Venice in 2014, in part to take advantage of the spacious Venice Airport Festival Grounds and 14,000 square feet of warehouse space on nearby Base Avenue.

But once her landlord opted to lease the building to the owners of Venice Mercato, Kowal knew a move was imminent because some of the larger pieces, including two elephant sculptures, are hard to move from an off-site warehouse to the festival grounds on the island of Venice.

All the items stored in Venice will be moved to the festival's warehouse space in Sarasota by August.

Plans call for smaller artistic showcases in both Sarasota and Venice this year, with a hope of hosting a full international festival in 2024 in Sarasota.

Weather impacts Venice festival efforts

Avenida de Colores, the nonprofit that funds the festival, staged a Chalk Festival at the airport festival grounds April 1-3, 2022.

That came after the COVID-19 pandemic erased the 2020 and 2021 festivals, traditionally held in November.

Chalk Festival Director Denise Kowal said the International Sarasota Chalk Festival will relocate to Sarasota from Venice, since Avenida de Colores, the nonprofit that stages the Chalk Festival, lost its warehouse space on the island of Venice.
Chalk Festival Director Denise Kowal said the International Sarasota Chalk Festival will relocate to Sarasota from Venice, since Avenida de Colores, the nonprofit that stages the Chalk Festival, lost its warehouse space on the island of Venice.

The 2018 festival was canceled because of a red tide bloom.

Plans to host the festival at the airport last October were scrapped when Hurricane Ian made landfall on Sept. 28. Kowal brought a smaller version of the 15th annual event – which frequently mesmerizes spectators with 3-D pavement art − to Sarasota on Oct. 28-31 but the nonprofit lost between $150,000 and $200,000.

“Nature seems to intervene a lot,” Kowal said.

Large pieces created in Venice

After six years in Sarasota, the Chalk Festival moved to Venice in 2014 for its seventh season, highlighted by a 3-D Megalodon Shark designed that briefly held the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest piece of anamorphic pavement art.

Created in 2014 at the Chalk Festival in Venice, this anamorphic pavement art piece depicts an extinct Megalodon shark that measured 22,747.60 square feet which at the time earned it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Created in 2014 at the Chalk Festival in Venice, this anamorphic pavement art piece depicts an extinct Megalodon shark that measured 22,747.60 square feet which at the time earned it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

In 2015 artists teamed up for the 3-D “Feast of the Gods” that set a world record, and in 2019 they refreshed the Megalodon piece, adding a prehistoric world around it that visitors could view from a scaffolding.

Those record-setting pieces could be created because of the space afforded by the use of the Venice Airport Festival Grounds.

“We had time to do big big projects at the airport that we won’t be able to do on city streets,” Kowal said. “But as everybody remembers, we pulled off a lot of wonderful things when we were in Sarasota and that’s what we’ll look to do.

Feast of the Gods was created in 2015 at the Chalk Festival on the island of Venice, when the festival theme was “Eat, Drink and Be Merry."
Feast of the Gods was created in 2015 at the Chalk Festival on the island of Venice, when the festival theme was “Eat, Drink and Be Merry."

“We’re really sad about the situation in Venice; we couldn’t have asked for better volunteers and support and the location was fabulous – it afforded us such an ability to expand creatively,” she added. “That location was golden for us ...we couldn’t have asked for a better situation.”

New ventures in Sarasota

Kowal and Avenida de Colores came up with some novel venues in Sarasota as well – notably the 3-D Illusion Museum at the old Ice House on 10th street, which opened in March 2020, just as COVID-19 pandemic social distancing came into play.

In 2021, as part of Sarasota County’s centennial celebration, artists produced the Avenue of Art , a self-guided tour through Burns Court with sidewalk panels depicting 100 years of Sarasota history.

Eduardo Kobra painted this mural at the Burns Court Villas in Burns Square in 2011 as part of the Chalk Festival. The mural – based on an old photograph of Lower Main Street in Sarasota – has been covered over as the wall on the side of the villas building has been repaired. Denise Kowal hopes to restore the mural as part of several Chalk Festival related projects in downtown Sarasota.

This year, Kowal hopes to revive a bit of Chalk Festival history, with the restoration of the Eduardo Kobra Mural  at the Burns Court Villas in Burns Square.

The mural, based on an old photograph of Lower Main Street in Sarasota, has been covered as the wall on the side of the villas building has been repaired.

Kowal will seek a location for the 2024 international festival, hoping to incorporate artists who practice  “Infiorata” and “Rangoli” – carpets of flowers created by artists using flowers, sand and other materials – which she hoped to introduce at the festival in Venice.

In addition, Kowal will look for opportunities to do pop-up illusion rooms and other events in late fall and early winter.

“We’re looking at some events that can be easily incorporated in the fabric of downtown without creating too much disruption in the area,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Chalk Festival moves back to Sarasota after loss of Venice warehouse