Festa Italia

Little Italy's Festa Italia is an annual event with all the standard booths selling crafts, countertops, T-shirts, newspaper subscriptions, voter registration, condos, etc. few of which have anything to do with Italy. Others sell italian sausages smothered in peppers and onions, cannelloni, Italian ices and other goodies designed to ruin a diet and cause gastric distress.

But the main attraction, what we go every year to see, is the street art - the chalk drawings (pastels actually) created on the pavement of the side streets. The only requirement is the theme must be "Italian". Pinocchio, madonnas, a sprawling fleshy nude, a mandolin, David. But this year the images were flat and unimaginative. Competent, but without inspiration. Earnest, but lacking.

The real art was the hands of the artists. Handfuls of broken colors tinting their skin, grim from rubbing pastels into the asphalt surface of the street. Their hands showing the tension their drawings lacked. Their hands were the real attraction. ~B