The chalk has long since washed away from Pineapple Ave., but our creative imaginations are still captivated by the amazing images from this year’s Chalk Festival. We found this video by Cold Sun Productions, representing some of the festival’s many international visitors, that’s helped us relive the magic all over again. We hope you enjoy! Chalk Festival 2012 from Sarasota Chalk Festival on Vimeo.

- For more photos, visit and “Like” Instudio E on Facebook. After three consecutive weeks we took a break from the after-10 p.m. meals—my waistline complained! Instead we did a weekend of “first times” to all these events, including being onstage with a reggaeton duo at the Floribbean downtown. Never a dull moment! We were part of the best turnout for Noise Ordinance 3 at the Cock & Bull Pub on Saturday. Check out the sand art we saw this past Sunday at the Siesta Key Crystal Classic. Kudos to several [...]

Graffiti-pop artist Clay Olson hopes to leave his colorful, graffiti-speckled mark on Sarasota in preparation for his second solo exhibition, titled “Ride ‘em Indian.” Consisting of 20 new pieces containing a Ben-Day dot-spin on iconic Native Americans such as Sitting Bull and Old West gunslingers such as Doc Holiday, the collection was inspired by Olson’s fascination with facial expressions, particularly within the Native American culture. “I love to work with Indian faces because they contain such strong emotion. It’s hard to resist being pulled into the history behind each piece,” Olson states. “And [...]

As history runs its course, the grandeur of buildings and sprawling empires, like the great men and women who build them, rises, falls and rises again with the tides of time — and since the dawn of civilization, mankind has gone to great lengths to document that process through art. With the advent of photography in the late 19th century, humanity gained the ability to turn a lens on history to capture these moments — from the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1888 to the fall of the World Trade [...]

I met the ever-lovable Amanda Landesberg at my first staff meeting with This Week in Sarasota earlier this year. Apart from her good looks and charming personality, I found myself observing the piece of jewelry adorning her neck. After the meeting, I asked Amanda about her intricate necklace, and she told me she did it herself. I thought … yeah, right!  I was blown away by her meticulous attention to detail, her color theory and most importantly her indescribable taste. Soon after that meeting, I got to see many more [...]

This year’s Chalk Festival is now over, but the impact it had on our community has yet to be fully assessed. I attended the festival on four separate occasions. You could feel the energy building as more and more chalk artists, among more than 50 participants, developed their work throughout the 10 days of the festival. As I heard one onlooker proclaim, the process of creation was more important than the final product. That may be true, but the final drawings were still breathtaking. They were intricate designs conceived brilliantly; [...]