The 22nd San Diego Little Italy FIESTA! cultural festival took place on Oct. 9. The full-day event claimed 15 out of 48 blocks of Downtown San Diego’s famous Little Italy business district.
“This is the largest event of its kind on the West Coast,” said Courtney Rose, a representative of the Little Italy Association. “It is like a homecoming to celebrate the year’s accomplishments and pay tribute to our heritage.”
She estimated 120,000 visitors strolled through the streets, enjoying over 150 vendor booths and entertainment, cooking shows, and cultural parades with Italian accents.
One of the highlights of the event was Gesso Italiano—Italian chalk art, a tradition that dates back hundreds of years. Artists of all ages, from amateurs to professionals, took to the street with their chalk and imagination, traditional or modern.
Visitors stood beside 3D chalk art of a lake, marveling at the illusion. Some tried to walk on the wooden bridge drawn across the water.
This is the work of Liliana Mai, an art teacher from Temecula Middle School, an hour’s drive north of Downtown San Diego. She enjoyed seeing people’s reactions to the 3D effect. She worked on it for 12 hours the day before and continued the piece in the early morning, pausing along the way to interact with visitors and explain her process.
“I like the part that you don’t get to keep it at the end,” she said. “Because it’s on the street, it’s getting washed away at the end of the day, so the process is important.”
Cecilia Linayao is a fine art painter from San Diego. As the feature Gesso artist of this year’s Fiesta!, she was entitled to a 12‘x12’ canvas (or pavement) instead of standard 8‘x8’. She decided to do a traditional Gesso Italiano painting of Madonna and a Child. The composition, she said, was inspired by a glass painting she saw at a cathedral during a recent visit to Italy.
Linayao said she fell in love with Gesso when she first saw it 15 years ago. She compared the different feeling with her normal studio painting: “here I use pavement, not a canvas, and instead of brush and wet paint, I’m using my hand with dry chalk.”
She said although the chalk art is temporary, the process and the feeling of fulfillment last, and the interaction with audience is what makes it enjoyable, too.
On a street block designated to young artists, Shawna Henderson, a former art teacher, was instructing students from Joan MacQueen Middle School from Alpine, Calif., to work on a piece of natural scenery.
While enjoying the day and the cultural and festival, she said “it’s a good opportunity for the students to plan ahead and work together as a team,” referring to having six students work on the same piece.
According to Courtney Rose, there were 60 artists and many students from San Diego schools who attended the Gesso Italiano.
