CANVAS FOR CORONAVIRUS: AN OCEAN BEACH SIDEWALK
Resident Erick Toussaint takes on art masterworks and requests, rendering them in chalk
OCEAN BEACH
Three months ago, Erick Toussaint came up with an idea to entertain his housebound children by creating some chalk art on the sidewalk in front of their house.
Although his two childrenquickly tired of watching their dad draw, Toussaint’s Ocean Beach neighbors have fallen in love with his nowweekly chalk reproductions of some of the world’s greatest masterpieces. To share the stunning chalk art with a wider audience, Toussaint recently launched an Instagram page, and he’s now taking requests, as well as the occasional chalk donation.
“Whether people are artistic or not, I live in a community that appreciates it,” said Toussaint, 40. “My neighborhood is really chill and supportive.”
One of those neighbors is Sandra Hamilton, who lives a few doors down from Toussaint on Muir Avenue. She said seeing his art periodically appear on the street has been a highlight of sheltering at home during the pandemic.
“They’re amazing,” Hamilton said. “I’ve told Erick how much I appreciated what he’s doing, especially since we’re in a quarantine. It’s a bright part of my day when I’m on my daily walk trying to get out of the house and I see someone beautifying the area.”
A few weeks ago, she asked Toussaint if he could memorialize in chalk her pit bull, Biggie, who died July 5 at the age of 11. She texted over a few photos, and the next day, he invited her over to see his work in progress.
“I walked up there and he captured my dog’s spirit so well I just burst into tears,” Hamilton said. “Every day for a week I walked up there and would just sit there and
look at it with my morning coffee. I knew it would go away. It was chalk and it was fading, but that was also kind of appropriate and symbolic for me.”
For Toussaint, creating the chalk drawings has been a way for him to keep his art skills fresh during the pandemic. He is the design director for the San Diego Natural History Museum, which has been closed to the public for all but five days since midmarch.
The Minnesota native has an undergraduate degree in fine arts from the University of Minnesota and a graduate degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. For most of his career he has worked in the museum field as a designer, exhibit fabricator and diorama painter. At the Natural History Museum, his work involves marketing and exhibit design.
Toussaint is now working from home, and he and his exwife split custody of their 7year-old daughter and 5year-old son. While helping his kids one day with distance learning in April, he asked his daughter for a fun outdoor way to take a break from schoolwork. She suggested they do some chalk art on the sidewalk, and he took the idea and ran with it.
“My kids pretty quickly lost interest, but I’m incredibly obsessive-compulsive and I wanted to keep going and see how far I could take it,” he said. “I set up rules for myself that I could only use Crayola chalk to re-create masterworks to see what I could do with this really basic material.”
The first piece he created was a self-described “looseygoosey” interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” From there, the drawings became increasingly sophisticated. They include Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” John William Waterhouse’s “The Lady of Shalott,” Gustave Courbet’s “The Desperate Man,” Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of St. Thomas” and Gustav Klimt’s “Hygieia,” which was looted and destroyed by the Nazis during World War II.
His latest chalk work, which he finished this past weekend, is William-adolphe
Bouguereau’s “The Young Shepherdess,” which is one of the most popular paintings in the San Diego Museum of Art’s collection.
Toussaint’s favorite chalk work so far was his color interpretation of a 1917 blackand-white illustration by Mexican painter Saturnino Herrán. He created it for his dad, who is Mexican, and because he feels it’s important to celebrate the work of unheralded artists of color like Herrán.
The chalk drawings take Toussaint anywhere from 45 minutes for Biggie’s portrait to three hours for the Saturnino illustration. Not everything he attempts is successful. His two favorite painters, James Abbott Mcneill Whistler and John Singer Sargent, have a painterly technique so specific that he hasn’t yet attempted translating their work in chalk.
“I’ve found it nearly impossible,” he said. “I want to try to attack them, but I worry that if I try, it might look muddy.”
While Toussaint still has a pending request from his sister for a piece by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, and a portrait for a neighbor whose son passed away, Toussaint said he’s considering branching out into new chalk repertoire. He thinks it would be a nice surprise for walkers and bikers to come upon trompel’oeil drawings of animals on the sidewalk.
The biggest challenge Toussaint faces these days is maintaining a steady supply of Crayola sidewalk chalk, which has become hard to find as parents rushed to stock up on children’s art supplies early in the pandemic. There’s also the inescapable fact that as soon as the works are complete, they begin to disappear. That saddens the neighbors, but not Toussaint.
“I do love that they’re ephemeral,” he said. “People bike over them, and a ton of fog will smear them. But I love the fact that they’re not meant to last forever. There’s something cool about that to me.”
To see more of Toussaint’s chalk art, go to instagram.com/ sidewalk_chalk_dad. Videos of their creation can be seen on his website, ericktoussaint.com.