Nearly every spring in Savannah since 1980, artists have swapped paintbrushes for sticks of chalk and canvases for gray squares of sidewalk, transforming Forsyth Park into a living masterwork for Savannah College of Art and Design’s Sidewalk Arts Festival. This year marks the college’s forty-fifth anniversary, and the outdoor walking path will unspool into nearly eight hundred chalk artworks, as students and alumni blend and layer chalk on Saturday, April 27.
As locals and visitors weave through the historic park, musicians will take to stages and vendors will serve up food and cold, sweet treats. Meanwhile, students will create their transitory masterpieces. “It’s a day of immense joy and excitement,” says Kassidy Keenehan, a junior studying painting and drawing who received an award from the festival in 2022 for her chalk re-creation of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s neoclassical painting L’Amour et Psyché, enfants. “It provides an opportunity for locals to engage with students and our artwork—the resounding encouragement from thousands of viewers fuels the creative expression.”
That expression won’t come solely in the form of chalk. This year, keep an eye out for Abigail Tankersley, a 2022 fiber arts alumna who will install her own brightly colored sculpture by the Forsyth Park fountain.