Hutton Marshall | Contributing Editor

Festa’s Gesso Italiano blends visual and performance arts

Watch where you step at this year’s Festa!, you may end up with some fine art on your shoe.

Now a regular feature at the Italian-themed festival in Little Italy which will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, chalk art paying tribute to the mother country will take over four city blocks during Festa!, which takes place from morning to night on Sunday Oct. 12.

The Little Italy Association (LIA), the event’s organizers, dubbed the Italian chalk art form “Gesso Italiano” — with a soft “g” — a contrived phrase nonexistent in Italy. If you find yourself abroad in Europe looking for chalk art, ask for “Madonnari” instead, which has Italian roots tracing back to the 14th Century.

At least in this urban village powered by Italian eateries, Gesso Italiano does appear to have an organic following behind it. Before being absorbed by Festa! fifteen years ago, Gesso Italiano was its own yearly happening, “Chalk La Strada,” which is another name of American invention. Since then, the medium blending visual and performance arts has become one of the main components separating Festa! from other neighborhood street fairs. This year, about 175 artists will work on 68 different works of Gesso Italiano, each with recognizable Italian subject matter.

“The only thing that separates us from other Italian chalk festivals in the United States is that we request or actually require that all of our artists do something Italian inspired, seeing as it’s an Italian-themed event,” said LIA District Director Chris Gomez.

The flagship of this year’s Gesso Italiano fleet will be a monolithic 20-by-30-foot painting of the Virgin Mary as seen on a stained glass window in the Duomo di Milano. Gaslamp-based artist Cecilia Linayao will lead the multi-artist effort, which will result in the largest chalked-up art piece Festa! has ever seen.

Although she’s not Italian, Linayao is passionate about this fleeting art form. Part of it, she said, is the beauty of getting lost in the moment and enjoying the process of creation, rather than relishing in the product. This is partially due to the fact that, at any given moment, the painstaking work can be washed away by rain in a matter of minutes. Even if the skies stay clear, the finished piece is gone in a week.

“I’ve got a whole slew of pictures of every time I’ve gotten rained out or when the forces of nature are against you,” she said. “When I knew going into it that it was going to be temporary, that part never bothered me, because it puts you in the Zen of it, that when you’re doing it, you can’t think of everything you’ve got to do tomorrow, you can’t think of everything you left yesterday.

“You need to be at that moment right in that creative zone, because if you’re not, your art is going to reflect that.”

However, Linayao’s skill and dedication to the chalk will be truly tested this year. Although she coordinated a giant recreation of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling in 2011, this year’s creation will be her greatest undertaking yet. She’ll be racing the clock from the minute the streets are closed off on Friday.

“That’s the challenge as the artist in this medium,” Linayao said. “You’re either burning the midnight oil, or sometimes, if the streets have to be closed, you can get a jump on them. In this instance, I think I’m going to get a jump on it because they’ll close them at 5 p.m., so as soon as the barriers go up and all the cops leave — the crazy person with all the chalk, that will be me.”

But not all artists share her love for the medium. In fact, Linayao said that out of the 49 other artists in her building of art studios, only a few have seriously given street chalking a go. But the sentiments of her contemporaries don’t surprise her.

“One, it’s temporary; two, it’s so physically demanding and three, it’s temporary, and some people just can’t get over that,” Linayao said.

That doesn’t mean she’s ready to watch the art form fade away completely. This year, her team collaborating on the Virgin Mary piece is primarily comprised of students. She hopes to inspire a new generation to pick up the chalk-covered torch after her.

“It’s such a beautiful art form, I don’t want it to die, and so I’m taking an active part to make sure I teach it and hand down anything and everything I’ve learned in order to keep it going,” Linayao said.

Fortunately, her efforts to keep the art alive don’t seem to be desperately needed yet. This year’s turnout of Gesso artists is Festa!’s largest to date. Check out Date Street between 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Oct. 12 to see it for yourself. For more information visit littleitalysd.com/events/little-italy-festa.

—Contact Hutton Marshall at [email protected].