Charlotte Chalk Art Festival

The Charlotte Chalk Art Festival returns to NoDa Brewing Company North End on Saturday, October 17 and Sunday, October 18, from 12 PM to 5 PM each day. It's a free two-day street art festival that brings together local and regional artists to turn a parking lot into a gallery on the ground. Along with the art, there's music, food, and vendors on site.

The competition is the main draw: youth and adult artists are each assigned a square of ground to work into a chalk masterpiece. It's a slow-burn kind of event, and you can watch the pieces emerge over the course of the weekend. Jerry's Artarama is one of the local partners supporting the festival, and they're the ones providing the chalk.

There's a bit of history behind it, too. The festival was started by Creative Canvas Productions, a Charlotte-based event management, video production, and motion graphics design company. They built it around a tradition that goes back to 16th-century Renaissance Italy, when artists called madonnari made their living collecting coins from passersby as they chalked paintings of the Madonna while traveling from village to village. The idea took shape in 2018 as Charlotte's art scene began to bustle, and the first festival launched in 2022. It's grown every year since.

Logistically, it's an easy one to drop into. The site is stroller, cane, walker, and wheelchair accessible, and parking is free. Admission is free, so you can swing by for an hour or spend the whole afternoon. It runs from 12 PM to 5 PM on both Saturday and Sunday at NoDa Brewing Company North End, 150 W 32nd St, Charlotte, NC 28206.