Entertainment

October 7, 2011

Chalk it up

By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@timesleader.com
Features Writer
Mary Therese Biebel on Facebook   |   @TLTLMaryTBiebel on Twitter

Working with a piece of red chalk, 10-year-old Oscar Scharrer of Wilkes-Barre drew wings, claws, a feather-covered body and an open bill.

“It’s a phoenix. He’s an awesome character,” Scharrer said during a recent art class at the Wyoming Valley Montessori School in Kingston. “He dies, but he rises from the ashes.”

Perhaps it’s overly dramatic to compare the legendary phoenix to a Children’s Chalk Festival, but the family-friendly event also has risen from the ashes. Or rather, it’s re-emerged, shaking drops of water from its tail after not one but two dunkings in the river.

Originally slated for early September and then for last week, the Children’s Chalk Festival has been rescheduled twice because of high water in the Susquehanna River. Barring a similar weather event this weekend, it will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow at the River Common in downtown Wilkes-Barre, near the Millennium Circle by the Luzerne County Courthouse.

“I’m a kid at heart, and I’m absolutely thrilled to re-present the second annual Children’s Chalk Festival,” River Common director of programming Karl Borton said.

“It will be very exciting to see our youths’ talent and creativity,” he said, adding last year’s event transformed the “colorless mass” of the River Common into a mosaic of artwork that stretched from the Veterans Memorial Bridge to the Market Street Bridge.

In addition to the chance to draw with chalk, which will be distributed free to the first 1,000 children, the festival offers programs on live birds of prey and mammals, fishing lessons, a fire-safety program, strolling entertainment and many chances to get creative.

“I’ll bring my usual bag of tricks,” Kathleen Godwin of Arts YOUniverse said, explaining she plans to encourage older children to make music with ‘flutes’ made from straws. “For those with smaller mouths, we can make kazoos from toilet-paper rolls, wax paper and paper clips.”

Volunteers from the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, meanwhile, will show children how to tie-dye T-shirts and how to make homemade chalk from Plaster of Paris and water.

“We have molds, the kind you use for chocolate or soaps,” coalition director Robert E. Hughes said. “They can make anything from butterflies to frogs to fruit to fossils.”

To give the chalk a bit of color, the volunteers will add a bit of iron oxide the coalition has harvested from local mine water.

The iron oxide is harmless, Hughes said, and is used by many artists.

Speaking of creative folks, some of the enthusiastic art students at the Montessori School said they might attend the Chalk Festival, where their art teacher, Liz Revit, expects to volunteer.

“The best part (of drawing with chalk) is you can start over,” Revit said as her prot�g�s worked busily on their projects.

“I love drawing,” 9-year-old Sean Wolfe of Nanticoke said as he sketched a turtle.

“This is the first thing that came to mind,” Madeline Walting, 11, of Nanticoke explained as she drew several fish.

“She’s a great artist,” 10-year-old Clare DellaValle said of her friend. “She’ll draw anything.”

What kind of artist does DellaValle consider herself?

“I’m abstract,” she said.

Abstract, realist, whatever kinds of artists you have in your family, you’re welcome to bring them to the Children’s Chalk Festival.

“It’s for children of all capabilities,” Borton said.

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