Create knowing it will be washed away.

The most common question I encounter when creating is “What about when it washes away?”

Well, then the canvas is clean. It makes room for something new to be created. A new opportunity to learn lessons, make friends, deliver the unexpected, and build lasting memories with an impermanent medium. I think it is important for us to utilize our public property positively. There are so many awesome and talented people out there with skills they can teach, and just as many others who are yearning to learn without having the knowledge to even know what to ask.

I’ve drawn hundreds of thousands of square feet of impermanent sidewalk chalk freehand circles all over Texas and Chicago. The design or pattern isn’t my own creation, it has been known about by people all over the world for thousands of years! People in today’s age and through the past have assigned symbolism to the pattern…some are kind of cool, lots feel really silly and over the top…I normally try to sum it up as:

Overlapping friend circles bring a community to blossom.

Suggesting we don’t ALL necessarily have to be friends…but the more overlapping circles we have, the more powerful we are as a community.

Chalk has helped me share ideas more widely in an arena outside of social media algorithms. In 2023 it has lead to confederates harassing me and washing away MLK art, getting wrongfully arrested for chalk, speaking at multiple city hall meetings, getting a settlement from the wrongful arrest, then there are articles, interviews, and other news documenting the wildness. Learning how to do a FOIA request is probably the most important thing I’ve learned. Prior to the chalk I still created in the streets…I traveled the country wearing a suit and tie and drew with my 18x24 inch sketchbook in my lap, with my open portfolio in a suitcase, holding up a sign saying

“Grandma says I need a job wearing a suit and tie…this is my compromise.”

I liked how the sign combined so many things not normally combined. An artist, dressed like a business man, sitting on a sidewalk, drawing beside a sign claiming he is [kinda] obeying his grandma.