Tampa Bay Chalk Festival To Bring Sidewalk Art To Historic Black Neighborhood

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — The inaugural Tampa Bay Chalk Festival will bring colorful chalk art to the sidewalks of the Deuces, an historic Black neighborhood in St. Petersburg, on Saturday.

A mix of professional, amateur and beginning artists, including local youth, will take over 22nd Street South between Seventh Avenue South and Ninth Avenue South with their designs, transforming the streets from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The free community festival, hosted by the Pinellas Diaspora Arts Project, welcomes artists Geary Taylor, Swirly Painter, Anthonee Williams, Myiah Moody, Yoany Rodriguez, Carrie Phillips, Iorielle Phillips and Jashawn Scott.

Community members, young artists and families who want to participate can apply on the PDAP website. The organization will provide free chalk to all participants.

Though the nonprofit was created to uplift and promote Black and brown arts and artists in the Tampa Bay region, the chalk art festival is open to everyone, organizers said.

The public is welcome to come out and watch the works in progress. The event will also feature local health and wellness vendors, and the businesses and eateries in the neighborhood, including Lorene's Fish & Crab House, Heavy’s Restaurant, Rastaman Natural Juices and Urban Drinkery.

Debbie Yati Garrett, artist, arts educator and PDAP board member, told Patch she’s excited to bring the inaugural chalk festival to the Deuces.

“It’s a unique spot. … I wanted to bring attention to the Deuces corridor and to bring attention that it is an African American historical area, and it is right in the middle of the art district,” she said. “I also wanted to bring that underground element of artists, Black and brown artists that do exist, that don’t always get the recognition, and there are Black and brown chalk artists that you rarely see. They often have to travel outside of the state.”

Now, these artists are excited to have the chance to showcase their chalk creations in their own backyard.

For years, Garrett has attended chalk art festivals in other cities — Sarasota, Tarpon Springs, Savannah, Orlando.

“That’s one of the many reasons why I wanted to bring this here. (Chalk art festivals) were happening everyplace else, but I felt like St. Petersburg is the art district of Florida,” she said.

Chalk art makes for an excellent family-friendly event and a great way to introduce children to the arts.

“It’s a way to involve the youth in the community and let them express themselves while having fun,” Garrett said. “And also, the plan is to educate the youth about wellness and using art as a platform to do so is one of the key elements of this event.”

PDAP was founded in June of 2021 by a group of Black artists, including Bob Devon Jones, co-founder of The Studio@620, and Jake-ann Jones, a journalist, writer, director and performer.

The concept grew from a 2019 interview between Jones and artist Nick Davis for The Weekly Challenger in which he discussed the “lack of awareness of the kind of arts culture, the necessity for the arts, in and among the people that he knew in St. Pete,” she said. “He was sharing that most of the ways in which parents give their children exposure to something outside of their regular home life or school was in sports and teen dancing, and that has to do with many things, but ultimately, the need to explore and excavate Black culture was at the front of our conversation.”

As she continued covering the arts for The Weekly Challenger, she learned about other artists and arts initiatives in the Black community. She was especially inspired by Dr. LaDonna Butler’s Healing While Black mental health awareness summits. In 2021, Butler hosted a summit geared toward the arts at the Studio@620.

“And it was a great conversation,” Jake-ann Jones said. “And there were artists from as far away as Orlando, and I sat there and I was like, ‘You know what? Maybe it is time to make this conversation a real conversation.’”

The timing was right, she added. Around the same time, the Green Book of Tampa Bay began hosting art shows and the Urban Drinkery, which hosts open mics, music and other art events, opened.

So, she joined forces with other Black artists, including Garrett, Bob Devin Jones, the late Sarasota artist John Sims, filmmaker Jabbar Edmond, Jai Hinson, executive director of the Arts 4 Life Academy in Clearwater.

“We brought people onto the board, people that we knew had shown a real commitment to Black culture in this area, and that’s how we came together,” Jake-ann Jones said.

The organization’s name has multiple meanings for the group.

“The term (diaspora) historically and for Black folks has to do with the germination out of the continent, the journey that all humans took, right? Because man, woman began in Africa. That’s not a debate,” she said. “So, the diaspora was something that happened across the world and so you’ll hear it spoken about it in different cultural groups … but in the African diaspora, it relates to how African people traveled around the world.”

The group decided it was the ideal term for an organization showcasing Black arts and culture.

“It was kind of a perfect word to describe the idea of how creativity flows through the world, kind of jumps out, it travels out and moves forward and crosses boundaries and ultimately ends up mixing; it is just the contribution of all,” Jones said. “So, for us, diaspora was a powerful word.”

Since its start, PDAP has hosted various community events, including workshops, literary and spoken word events, artist talks and panels, movie screenings, markets, and more.

The organization’s largest event to date has been its Tampa Bay Afrofuturism Festival, which launched last year. The festival returns this fall, Nov. 10-12, at venues throughout the region, offering art and technology workshops, panels, and other activities.