Canvassing the Neighborhood

Photograph by Joy Phoenix

Next month, hundreds of professional artists and children will converge on San Rafael, Calif., to turn the blacktop of the city’s streets into their own urban museum. The annual Italian Street Painting Festival, modeled on an event in northern Italy, draws around 50,000 visitors who come to see pastel art in the making along the three-block “gallery.”

The event is held by Youth in Arts, a local charity that offers arts instruction in schools near San Francisco as well as cultural performances for young people.

“We are trying to bring the arts and the awareness of the need for arts education to the public, and this is another way of doing that,” says Sue Carlomagno, the festival’s director.

The program is the group’s biggest fund-raising event. Sponsorships of artists and space along the asphalt, as well as the sale of Italian food and festival paraphernalia, brought in around $145,000 last year.

The 200-some images created in the festival range in style from Italian Renaissance to ultramodern. The art, which can be painstakingly intricate, is also temporary: By the Monday morning following the weekend event, not a trace of it is left. Here, Tomoteru Saito, an artist in Florence, Italy, who attends the festival each year, perfects his art on the streets of San Rafael.