It has been years since we have been in Santa Barbara for Memorial Day weekend. Each Memorial Day weekend since 1987 the I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival has been held at the Old Mission. The plaza of the Old Mission is transformed with 200 colorful, large-scale street paintings created by 400 artists and young people. The artists (madonnari) begin working on Saturday morning of the Memorial Day weekend and continue drawing throughout the three-day festival or until their street paintings are completed. For 25,000 annual visitors, the festival also features live music on the Mission lawn and free evening concerts in the church, authentic Italian cuisine, and a special street painting area for children.
Since we were in town we decided to take an evening stroll among the artwork (some still in progress). It was a beautiful evening and the artworks were beautifully vibrant and vairied in theme.
Here is a Link to my 2009 Santa Barbara I Madonnari album on Picassa.
Here is a Link to a gallery of photos (not mine) from last years festival.
1 comment:
Summer and I were in town last year at this time and visited the mission to see the chalk artwork. I was amazed at the realism in some of them. Too bad we missed it this year. :(
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