WETA Arts | Chalk Riot's Sidewalk Art Helps Revive Communities | Season 11 | Episode 1

In downtown Silver Spring, a stretch of Ellsworth Drive is being prepped for a makeover.

Refashioning the pavement mural is Chalk Riot, a public art production company specializing in paint and chalk, founded by Chelsea Ritter-Soronen.

Ritter-Soronen: We gotta give it a fresh coat of white paint, and the white just helps make the colors pop once we get into the colors on this design.

We had no intentions of making it a business, and it was just a time that we could get together and just create in public without breaking any laws, without seeking permission, without trying to get paid.

We were just having fun, and that felt like a chalk riot.

Chalk Riot has evolved into, we say, pavement artwork instead of just chalk artwork.

We've become nerdy experts on the types of sidewalks that exist or the types of asphalt that exist, and each of those different types require different art mediums, and each project has different goals as far as how long we want the artwork to last or, on the flip side, how easily it needs to be washed away.

The ephemerality of chalk art is liberating.

It's a reminder that everything we do is really about the experience, because what is permanency anyways?

Curry: The Ellsworth Drive design is intended to stay in place for a year, and it's sponsored by Peterson Companies, which manages downtown Silver Spring.

It keeps things interesting and fresh and fun and unexpected, and it gives the community a chance to see what Chelsea and her team can do.

Curry: Ritter-Soronen met one member of her team, Ann Gill, at the 2019 Women's March, for which they both made protest art.

By training, Gill is an illustrator.

My preferred medium is digital art.

Doing the pavement art, it's a good switch.

I'm learning in a different style because mine is really graphic-y, like line work.

I was like, "Oh, let me learn chalk art "and let me learn how to be a little bit looser with my painting."

My artwork looks a lot better now because of it.

Curry: Chalk Riot artist Samantha Hamilton was a student at American University when she met Ritter-Soronen.

Hamilton: Chelsea came to campus to train students on how to use chalk as a medium for spreading political messaging.

It was a really great way to combine my loves for art and political science.

There's a lot of planning beforehand with actually creating renderings and getting permission from the folks who are commissioning the project.

Ritter-Soronen: It's a physically taxing project.

It's actually really easy to forget how long you've been sitting in one-squished up position.

Suddenly, two hours has gone by and, like, you get all stiff.

Curry: Running an art business is not what Ritter-Soronen had planned as a profession.

I was studying costume design for theater and film and graduated in 2008 at the peak of economic collapse.

I'd hang out with my scene-painting friends, and that's when I really got the bug for painting.

I worked at coffee bars and I worked at wine bar and I started doing, like, signboards for restaurants and cafes and then somebody would ask me, "Oh, who made that?"

And then I could sell my work over it.

I'd be like, "Oh, it was me.

Hire me."

[Laughs] ♪ The original chalk artists are called madonnari, which means a person who is drawing the Madonna.

People would pay their respects for how good the art was or how beautiful the art was by putting coins onto the drawing.

This sparked the tradition that is still around today.

Curry: Following in the madonnaris' footsteps, Ritter-Soronen found success busking in Europe.

Ritter-Soronen: I'd be out creating art and meeting other artists in cities where street art was a huge, huge deal.

It still is a huge deal.

Then I hopped over to the Fringe Festival in Perth, Australia, and there were buskers of all different types, from drag performers to acrobats to me with my chalk.

So, I learned a ton and also got steeped in that culture for the first time where I could ask really vulnerable questions of, like, "OK, how do we make this work?"

When you're at the foot of humanity, when you're at the foot of traffic, you hear everything, you see everything, and just the act of creating on the ground sparks dialogue.

To be able to do that and make money kind of became my dream job.

Curry: After stints in Europe, Australia, Mexico, and California, Ritter-Soronen relocated to Washington, DC.

Ritter-Soronen: I noticed working on the ground here that aggressive driving is serious and it's different than other cities.

♪ Chalk Riot got commissioned by Department of Transportation to do a mural along Wheeler Road.

The people in the community were really sweet.

They, like, came out and got us snacks and they let us use their bathrooms and everything.

But the traffic was really, really dangerous.

And there's two schools on that block.

Projects like that are really inspiring and just, like, gives me that boost to just keep going.

Curry: While Chalk Riot's transportation clients are trying to use art to save lives, property managers like Peterson Companies in Silver Spring are seeking to preserve social space.

We wanted to create a space that helped people feel like they could safely gather and support our restaurants.

Ritter-Soronen: This mural is like a visual cue to the public that you are free to enjoy your lunch on the cafe tables out there, meet a friend for coffee, walk your dog, skateboard, whatever you want to do.

This is a public space and not just a road for cars.

Curry: To celebrate the completion of the Ellsworth Drive mural, Peterson Companies and Chalk Riot host a chalk festival allotting squares of pavement for people to use as their canvas.

Ritter-Soronen: This morning was our first time seeing the mural without all the cones around.

It's so gratifying to see it finally come into fruition and see all the people out.

This is my first time doing chalk art.

I am working on a diamondback terrapin.

I went to the University of Maryland, so, go Terps.

I'm 14 years old and I'm from Wheaton, Maryland.

I think Afros give really, like, flowy, texture kind of vibe, so, to me, I, like, associate that in my head with jellyfish.

When you step out of your home and you see your community livened up with art installations like the street mural and then events like today's chalk fest, this is the reason that you are not shopping online.

By fully exercising that public space and bringing people out and fostering local businesses, public space remains public.

You can find Chalk Riot's work across the city, from a tribute to DC jazz legend Shirley Horn at 6th and O Streets Northwest to a riff on artist Alma Thomas' style near her former home at 15th and O Streets Northwest.

There are pavement art events across the nation throughout the year.

Learn more at chalkartnation.com.

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