How long will it last: The chalk just keeps on keeping on.

The front page of the Wednesday, November 5, 2008 issue of TBT*Tampa Bay Times, the daily that has gained a wide readership on both sides of the bay, is reproduced on the sidewalk at Hyde Park Village. The chalk art reproduction is still visible after several weeks of foot prints, weather and lots of dog paws that have crisscrossed its surface a thousand times. The artwork was created during the inaugural Chalk Walk, a public festival of drawings created in late March by about 25 individuals, families and groups. The Tampa Bay Business Committee for the Arts played host and several other companies joined together to sponsor the events for the hundreds of artists and Chalk Walkers. Some of the finished works were huge and others not so big but they all showed great imagination, design and color. Tampa's future was their theme and it was interpreted in a wide number of ways by adults and children. Tampa's skyline, mass transit systems and beautiful people were favorite elements of many of the designs. Sidewalks in front of village restaurants, shops and around the fountain of Hyde Park Village were used liberally as canvases. As the days have gone by most of the works have disappeared, but this one remains. Public chalk art by it very nature smears, smudges and literally blows away. (Think of the Florentine artists working on the touristy streets by the Ponte Vecchio.) What we need are more chalk artists, more frequently.