Chalk Architecture Saturday

Downtown Chalk Art Festival
all kids, adults & families welcome!

Saturday, September 6, 2008
rain date Saturday, September 20
9:30 am- 12:30 pm

Memphis Farmers Market 545 South Main Street (just west of Central Station)

New award categories! "Most Original", "Best Replica", and the "Professional Artist" and "Architecture Firm" division awards in addition to "Youth", "Team" and "Adult"
All supplies provided AND great prizes from the Art Center and Saint Francis Hospital given!

Register in advance to enter the competition, or just stop by and enjoy the other festival activities and select your "Best of Show". So make your grocery list and visit us at the market!

Several activities are on hand at no cost for kids and adults including a free style chalk area, "Balloon Man Mike", face painting, "Draw Dog" from the Art Center, and live music. Due to the generous support of our returning partners Saint Francis Hospital and the Art Center, this event continues to be free to all those who participate. Chalk provided for all pre-registered participants in the competition. Great prizes awarded in all categories.

To register and get more information go to www.aiamemphis.org or call 901.525.3818.

Farmers Market on Front

Downtown's Memphis Farmers Market has been such a big success for downtown, I wonder if you could build on it, literally.

Presently MFM's great energy is bottled up behind the parking lot that surrounds it.


But if you moved the bus shelter to the west, about 50 feet,


so that it was flush with Front Street,


the Farmers Market could really energize Front. All without parking loss.

And with a more visible MFM home and energetic Front Street, perhaps MFM could expand its operations, slowly making it a persistent market and an incubating showcase for fledgling retail entrepeneurs. And to give it an even more permanent presence, you could build a corner office which could be a demo space for the entrepeneurs, a coffee house for the colder months, administrative offices, and an architectural advertisement for the Market.

Just thinking how Memphis can connect social energy and urban space to make more of both.