Chalk it up to ArtFest

By Jeremy Twitchell

Saturday, May 9, 2009 | 2 p.m.

High school students worked alongside professional artists this morning on a new sidewalk chalk art exhibit to provide a new wrinkle for the 12th annual Henderson ArtFest.

The festival, which brings hundreds of artists to downtown Henderson for three days of displays, demonstrations and live entertainment, kicked off Friday night and continues through Sunday on Water Street in downtown Henderson.

New to ArtFest this year is the Piazza Colori -- a chalk art competition on the plaza next to City Hall that's doubling as a fundraiser for the Green Valley Rotary Club.

Donovan Fitzgerald, a professional chalk artist recruited to participate in and judge the competition, said it he was impressed by the competition's first outing.

"There's a good mix of artists here, and it's looking really good," he said. "There should be some good art coming out of this."

Fitzgerald began working on a 13 1/4 foot by 10 foot reproduction of Caravaggio's "The Entombment of Christ" on Friday night -- a project that he expected would take about 25 hours of work to complete.

As he worked through the heat this morning, Fitzgerald frequently drew crowds of 20-30 people. And that's precisely what drew him into chalk art, he said.

"I like being able to talk to people and let them see the process of creating the painting," he said.

Many of the companies that purchased squares for the chalk art competition chose to have art students from local high schools paint art for them.

Green Valley students Felicia Horzempa and Katerina Kojeva were doing a freehand rendering of a Marilyn Monroe painting one such square. Their first foray into sidewalk chalk art was a slight departure from their preferred medium of charcoal, but both said they enjoyed it.

"It's just so freeform," Horzempa said. "You can just do whatever and people are really nice."

"I'm really excited to see what it looks like at the end," Kojeva said.

For Henderson artists, ArtFest is a golden opportunity to stir interest in the local arts community, much of which is based in the galleries that line Water Street.

"It's fantastic to see this much traffic on Water Street, which is notoriously quiet," said Dana Satterwhite, creative director for the Henderson Art Association. "But this is great. There's a lot of people here and it's definitely moving in the right direction."

Satterwhite said he and many members of the Art Association chose not to sell art at the festival because it just didn't seem like the right time with the economic situation, but still welcomed the chance to be out and about with fellow artists and the community at large.

"It kind of flies in the face of everything Vegas represents, but that's great," he said. "It shows that there's a bit of culture here, too."

Satterwhite's wife, Kristen Hertzenberg, is a member of the "Phantom of the Opera" cast at the Venetian. For her, ArtFest is a valuable resource to network with other artists and strengthen the community.

"I think there's a lot of interest out there, but we need to find each other," she said.