Bunch of Drawings done by other artists at Eau-Claire

  I really liked the kid's cat unicorn.

There was more to this, but due to sun glare and size I was having trouble photographing it.

Mine from Eau- Claire Chalkfest

I have gotten labeled as creepy at this event due to the ants and this one.  Although the girls who labeled me as such were copying Disney cartoon stills.  I will view it as a compliment.

Below is an earlier stage.  My goal was to make it look like the concrete was opening its eye.  Maybe the earlier stage does better at that.  I didn't have a lot of time for prep work, I just had a close up of my eye.

Artspire Sidewalk Chalk Drawing

So this year I did not draw as a participant in the contest.  I was commissioned to do a drawing for the event.  I got my picture in the paper.  Perhaps the best thing though was kind of a weird thing.  Some back story is needed though.  I have talked before about the Nazi I worked with at the La Crosse Center.  She ended up getting fired because she was a whore.  Lest anyone think I am slut shaming.  She was dating a guy who worked nights her official boyfriend.  I heard some speculation about her and the one supervisor I mentioned in the post about the lollipops.  The one that got her fired was her apparent relationship with the head of the department.  I remember seeing her going up to him and drumming on his belly.  Eyebrows were really raised though when he would pull her from working even if we were busy to go have a smoke break by themselves.  I guess as character proof she had told me that there was a teenage boy across the street, and she liked teasing him by leaving her blinds up.  As for Tom, the engineer repair guy had started at the Mary Sawyer and switched to the Center when it was built, so he had been there longer than Tom.  He had said Tom had a bit of a history doing that.  I was working with the engineer one time when he took us back to a dressing room that was not used all that much, he called it Tom's make out room.  He said it was where he took them.  He was like in his 50's she was like in her early 20's.  Some of the women in power positions started paying attention, so Tom fired her to save his own skin.  Anyways a bit down the road her boyfriend came to first shift.  I really didn't want to like him.  I ended up liking him, although in retrospect I don't know what I was thinking.  He once said "I like watching Cops because I think the suicides are funny."  Anymore I think I dodged a bullet.  He also had some bad anger issues towards women.  He once assaulted his adopted Mom when he was using heroin.  She didn't mess around, she called the cops, and let him sit in jail.  He said that was what snapped him out of it, and made him realize he had to stop and clean up his life.  I guess some of my attraction to him was the fact he had overcome his heroin addiction and was doing well.  Uncle Joe had been a heroin addict.  My uncle was good at heroic type stuff, but he was not good at everyday life.  He largely lived off grandma, and for awhile lived in a van in my aunt's driveway.  He never married or had kids.  So I guess that was part of my attraction to the Nazi's boyfriend. So anyways some of the people at the Center were trying to get me to hook up with him.  When I was getting ready to leave for my grad program the engineer told me he thought I should stay, take a lead position at the center and marry the Nazi's boyfriend.   He had been through a bad marriage, his got to the point where he was dropping of the kids (not actually his) to where his wife was with this other guy before he went to work.  I opted to go to graduate school.  Following graduate school I ended up developing schizophrenia, incidently I was not the only one in that graduate program to develop it.  A guy got it while he was in the program.  Anyways during my first episode the Nazi's boyfriend and Nazi were my tormenters.  So I was shocked to see him at Artspire across from where I was drawing.  He helps his adopted Mom with the business end of her passion for stainglass.  Also part of the attraction I had for him.  I didn't say anything to them, I focused on my commission.  At one point though I heard his Mom say "You had an oppurtunity to be with her and you went with that Nazi!"  That was an incredible moment for me.

Artspire Spider

Really big Moth

I got back from work tonight and noticed a big moth hanging out by the bottom of my neighbor's door.  I think it is the biggest I have ever seen in person, I thought it was a bat at first.  It is about 4 inches long.  I am not sure what type of moth it is.  It is too bad it didn't show up before the Eau Claire Chalkfest.

Okay so maybe this is not completely effective, I wanted to show how I dirty I got.  You tend to get dirty doing side walk chalk drawing.  I ran into a blond woman yesterday with a fancy dress on and perfectly clean children, who was staring at me with absolute disgust.  I guess I am not sure why.  I don't know why she would come to an event like this though and expect to be met by perfectly clean artists.

This is mine from Eau Claire Chalkfest

I went with moths.  One is an Io moth, one is a Polyphemus, the other is a Cecropia silk moth.  They are all native to WI.  From the picture I saw they do actually look quite big, about hand size.  Early in the day I had some jerks.  It kind of seemed like I could tell the difference between day shift oriented people and more night shift people.  Little kids unanimously thought they were butterflys, and they tend to be more day shift people.  Later in the afternoon people got nicer and more people were figuring out they were moths.  The things that made it all worth while for me were an old woman who stopped and said she liked my moths, and she wanted to know where I was from.  I told her La Crosse, and she thanked me for coming all that way to draw.  Another guy stopped and said something latinish at me, I said huh, he said the polyphemuspolyphemus.  He was givinge the scientific name.  The third guy told me that anyone else would do butterflys, and he said kudos for going off the deep end and doing moths.