For over a decade I’ve had my eye on an abandoned tennis court on the decommissioned Naval Air Base on Alameda Island, off the coast of Oakland. What a great place to make a large drawing, or create a chalk drawing park. Well that didn’t happening, it wasn’t the right time, and then the local soccer club took over the site and the vision faded.
I had looked into creating a world record chalk drawing by one artist. But I had a hard time imagining having a good enough reason to do this by myself when I work with so many kids and communities.
Enter Covid! In the fall of 2020 I drove by the site and it said to me, “hey, guess what, no one is using this soccer area now, and you actually can’t work with anyone, so… let’s do it!” That put the gears in motion and in April 2021, over Earth Day week, I created the “Largest Chalk Street Art by One Artist.”
The record was 1,800 sq. ft. I covered 18,500 sq. ft. in 6 days. To me it was an epic adventure. The end product was OK, I learned a lot and would of changed some design elements. And – that was really fun and so satisfying to have a vision come to fruition after so many years.
~MLW (founder of DoE)
