A colorful blue norther
Yucky weather doesn't faze these artists: They scribble on the sidewalk through it all
The weekend's unfriendly weather failed to dampen the spirits of either artists or participants in the two-day Houston Via Colori Street Painting Festival benefiting the Center for Hearing and Speech. Hermann Square and City Hall environs swarmed with 15,000 supporters who helped raise $400,000 for the non-profit.
Bands — including The Suffers, La Sien and the Justin Van Sant Band — kept the music playing while close to 200 artists put their chalk to the pavement creating a vast array of mural masterpieces ranging from landscapes to portraits to abstracts.
The Center for Hearing and Speech's Rebekah Bennett reports that the crowd favorites included a black and white portrait mural by Cecelia Linayao, a dragonfly mosaic by Allison Kellogg and a 3D Native American mural by Mario Alberto Belmares.
Beyond watching the sidewalk art unfold, there was the Via Colori scavenger hunt, complete with a beer tent and cornhole, with 200 teams of young professionals scouring the festival site for clues leading to prizes.