TACOMA — First it was a bunch of friends eating lunch in a downtown park. Then it was a challenge to see who could chalk the best picture. More people joined in, passers-by voted online, sponsors gave prizes — and the Friday Frost Park Chalk Offs became a downtown Tacoma fixture through last summer and fall. Now beginning their second season, the Chalk Offs are holding steady.
Every Friday from noon to 1 p.m. people gather — artists, workers, parents and the regulars — at Larry Frost Memorial Park to chalk the concrete, or watch others.
The sidewalk, steps and walls of this pocket park on S. Ninth and Commerce streets jump into colored swirls, landscapes, cartoons and for one hour the park itself becomes the kind of friendly, communal area a city so badly needs.
The whole idea started with Tacoma cartoonist R.R. Anderson, who was hanging out in the park with friends during their lunch hour.
“One day I decided to bring some chalk, and challenged everyone to a drawing competition,” says Anderson.
Word spread.
Blogger Erik Bjornson set up a thread and online voting at www.feedtacoma.com, and local businesses started to sponsor weekly prizes such as a restaurant meal. Anyone could join in — free chalk was provided.
But why Frost Park? Sandwiched between the Commerce Street bus stops and the Pacific Avenue garages, the tiny terraced park — named in honor of a police officer killed on duty — is not exactly a feed-the-ducks, walk-the-dog kind of place.
And that’s exactly why Anderson and his friends chose it.
“The cops have an urban design SWAT team who, if an area has too much crime, come in and fence it off to keep people out,” says Anderson. “There’s a place near the library that looks like Guantanamo Bay. They were thinking of doing that at Frost: The homeless people were using the alcoves as a toilet, there were crack dealers. We liked the park, and we came here to be a presence. And it worked.”
According to Mark Fulghum, spokesman for the Tacoma Police Department, fencing off an area due to crime is “one of the options people have,” although it’s not a policy. Rob McNair-Huff, community relations manager for the City of Tacoma, confirms that fencing Frost Park was indeed “under consideration at some point, but it was pulled back.”
On this particular Friday in May, the park is filled with around 30 people, about a third of whom are chalking.
There are artists who know what they’re doing, casual scrawlers having fun, kids doing Pollock-like scribbles.
Passers-by stop to check it out, pushing babies in strollers. A parking officer watches.
Among those watching is Patricia Menzies, a recently retired city worker. She’s a regular at the Chalk Offs and loves it.
“It’s wonderful,” she says. “This has become my tribe. It has turned the park around. The more we use them, the more they’ll become the parks we want.”
For a lot of those chalking, though, it’s just a good opportunity to be creative in a different way.
“Chalk’s a universal, childish thing,” says Holly Lucination, who’s drawing pink and purple floral arabesques while wearing a silk and lace ruffled skirt. Amazingly, it’s not full of chalk, though Lucination admits keeping clean is a difficult part of sidewalk chalking. “I’ve done this since the beginning; I’m inspired by the trompe l’oeil style of oil painting on the ground. It’s not hurting anyone, it washes away. Everyone feels different when they see it, and see other people’s perspective.”
Down the hill, Larry Erhardt is creating a circular medallion filled with a pale-leafed tree and a black crow.
Around the edge is inscribed the Latin chant for the dead, the Dies Irae.
“I was listening to the Mozart ‘Requiem’ this morning,” says Erhard, explaining his inspiration. He competes in the Chalk Offs only occasionally because it’s hard to fit it in around his refinery shift work.
How does it feel to be putting so much effort into something that will be walked on in a few minutes, rained away in a few hours?
“This art isn’t permanent,” Erhardt says calmly. “But at least it’s out there, touchable, not behind glass like in a museum. And nothing’s permanent. I’m not, the sidewalk’s not. It doesn’t matter.”
The Frost Park Chalk Offs have evolved since that day Anderson pulled out a stick of chalk. Rules were established on Anderson’s Web site, www.holisticforgeworks.com.
They include having a loose Tacoma theme in the art, not frightening small children, keeping it humorous and outlawing glitter.
There have also been technical discoveries in the medium used.
“We started out with thin sticks of white chalk; it was really lame,” says artist Andrea Trenbeath Lowen, one of Anderson’s original challengers and a regular chalker ever since. “Then we went to colored chalk, and thicker sticks. Then we discovered Prang — it’s like a pastel and the color really jumps out. And charcoal — it’s actually charcoal briquettes.”
Wearing business clothes on her way to work at the Museum of Glass, Trenbeath Lowen is sketching out a strip of movie film using said charcoal, which creates a thick dark line.
By 1 p.m., the contest is unofficially over. Chalk flows down Ninth Street like a waterfall. On the concrete walls defining the park there are an octopus, a cowboy and the art deco ferry MV Kalakala (moored on Tacoma’s Hylebos Waterway since 2004). Hands are red and blue, clothes are streaked, fingers grazed.
The crowd starts to dissipate. They’ll be voting on the photographed images online until midnight.
Anderson, the creator of the Kalakala, sums it up: “Downtown can be depressing — all the ‘bus people,’ the low-income places. So we try and be a positive element in that.”
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