May 27, 2008 - Birds Eye Viewed

Last weekend, artists covered the parking lot at the Mission with chalk, sweat, and birds. It was the I Madonnari Festival - one of the things that make each Memorial Day Weekend memorable. Every year since Edhat has been around, the dedicated staff of edhat.com has gone to the Mission to inspect the chalk paintings for certain key elements and tally them up with tally counters.

Ed is particularly drawn to projects like this. By repeating the same process every year, it is easy to get a big picture view of current trends and styles. Read last year's story to see how Ed's vision is progressing.

Well, as we have seen year after year, birds rule at the Mission. They won again. This year, cats edged out sea animals for second place. Last year we croaked about the fact that there were no frogs at all. This year there were four - many of them the dominant element of the painting. We also counted four Missions, a big increase over past years. The elements in order of frequency were as follows: 24 birds, 13 cats, 11 sea animals, 8 dogs, 5 insects, 4 babies, 4 frogs, 4 missions, 3 horses, and 2 bicycles. In one painting, Kermit the Frog was depicted riding a bicycle. But for some unknown "traditional" reason, Kermit was shown as a dog.

There were also two elvis sightings this year - one in chalk, and one live in person

Our 2008 I Madonnari picture gallery is online with painting pictures. If you have some good pics to add, please email them to us. Check it out We also posted a gallery on our site of people taking picture of the art. Maybe we caught you in the act.

One recurring theme with the Chalk Festival Elements Contest has been a lack of success by the contestants. Although the elements were very close in rank to last year, no one got the correct three in order ... and no one got close. Ed ruled that there were would be no free t-shirt today.