Street Art Fest attendees colorfully decorate Berkley roads

BERKLEY — Downtown Berkley brought in thousands of people July 13 for its annual Street Art Fest.

The Berkley Street Art Fest returned for another year and had many people sprawled across Coolidge Highway covering the road for the chalk art contest.

Timothy Cory, of Canton, created two chalk art murals on the street, one of a fox and another of a parrot. Cory has participated in the Street Art Fest contest for the last six or seven years.

“It’s performance art,” he said of making chalk art. “Having stuff in galleries is one thing and only a few people will ever see it. Somebody buys it, 20 people see it. You come to a festival, thousands of people get to see my work. I get to put it out there. It may not last, but I get to show people what I do, which is really fun. You just want to show people your talent. So I love it just being able to showcase what am I thinking, what am I doing, what am I trying differently.”

Cory works as a creative director in advertising and spent some time creating mock-ups of what he wanted the chalk art to look like before settling on his final designs. He said he was happy with how his work came out.

“I try to find different things to challenge myself,” he said. “When I knew I was doing Berkley again … I must have gone through nine iterations of what I was going to do this weekend. So I’m like, ‘OK, which one do I want to do?’”

Sam Balwinski, of Berkley, participated in her second chalk art contest, where she made a mural of Rapunzel. Balwinski said she works with art pretty casually and she works as an art teacher at a summer camp.

“Since I work with kids, they’re like the only people who really see my art nowadays,” she said. “So having other people come up and say things is really cool, especially because I don’t really post stuff that I make online or do it really much anymore other than like this.”

Balwinski said she likes working with chalk art because of the limited color palette it provides.

“It kind of makes you more creative in that sense because you have to mix (the chalk), and I like the mixing element,” she said. “I made the reference photo on digital art, and I was having such a hard time with it. And I knew that it will look better when I actually make it with chalk.”

Berkley Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Darlene Rothman said the whole event was great and that the dog adoption tent was a big hit with people.

“We’ve had several people just walk on because they heard about the event going on,” she said. “So probably at least 10 different people that have come today just signed up (for the chalk art contest). … It’s been a good turnout.