Despite recent rains, a work of art has been in the making since Wednesday in front of the Kentucky Center on Louisville’s Main Street. And it’s scheduled for completion tomorrow. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.British sidewalk artist Julian Beever has been working under and tent and using sandbags to hold off the water while he paints an image that features a bridge and tunnels for this week’s Idea Festival.
Beever says the rain hasn’t been his main dilemma on this project."The drawing is a bit more technically difficult than the one I’d anticipated," Beever says. "So, just the first two days were involved in quite difficult technical issues, like getting the lettering right for that “Idea Festival” and these arches and the brickwork and the perspective."Beever creates his images by looking through a camera to see his progress and chart his next moves.Beever says he does this to chart his progress and determine his next moves."The difficulty’s getting the shapes right," he says, "because I have to draw it in a distorted way so that it looks correct when you look at it through my camera which is set up on the one specific point. So, getting that distortion right is the hard bit."He says the rain has been more of a nuisance than a real threat to painting.
"I’ve got a nice cover over this drawing, but the problem has been the water coming in underneath so I’ve had to fight it off with sandbags — but successfully," he says." The middle part stayed dry and I’ve been working on it."Beever estimates he has created 80 of these chalk paintings since graduating from art school and making this the focus of he career. Administrators of the Idea Festival chose the image that Beever is creating in Louisville.