Chalkboard art antes up all over Philly

Street art, by its very definition, is temporary. But when you're literally sketching on the street, the window of time between "voila!" and "Where'd it go?" can be devastatingly small.

Just ask Sara Walker. A server and resident artist at Center City's Jose Pistola's, she busted out the chalk bucket the second the eighth annual Philly Beer Week came around earlier this summer. She spent hours hunched over the 15th Street sidewalk, scratching out an elaborate series of colorful illustrations promoting the bar's dozens of scheduled Beer Week events.

Drinkers ooh-ed. Passers-by ahh-ed.

Cue "American Storm," by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. Suddenly the pressure's fallin', fallin' . . .

And just like that, Walker's work was literally washed down the drain. A foregone conclusion, of course, but a total drag, nonetheless.

Lucky for Walker and others, there seems to be an increased emphasis on ephemeral art inside Philadelphia's bars and restaurants as of late, one that speaks to the vibrant overlapping of the city's interconnected artistic and culinary communities.

The preferred creative medium of trigonometry teachers, competitive hop-scotchers and pint-size blacktop Picassos, chalk has long had its place in dining rooms, too. Wipe-and-write boards advertising set menus, food specials, beer and wine lists or cocktail selections have been a fixture in casual places for years. It's a simple and engaging way of letting your customers know what's currently available, encouraging people to look up and drink in their surroundings, instead of burying their noses in a paper menu or in their phones.

But certain artistically minded establishments have taken this feature a step further, tapping the creative veins running through their employees to both inform and entertain.

"Do you do chalkboards?" That was one of the first questions asked of Kelly Franklin when she interviewed for the job of Whole Foods in-store graphic specialist four years ago. The Plymouth Meeting link in the national chain needed someone to develop original pieces for display in the store, and Franklin, fresh out of the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in illustration, needed a job. She worked there for three years and at a Glen Mills shop for one before deciding to peddle her services on a full-time basis.

Franklin quickly fell in with Stephen Starr's multi-state fleet of restaurants, a high-profile starting point she's used to launch a busy freelance career (kellypfranklin.com). Though she's a painter by training, a majority of Franklin's professional life is now occupied by this type of work - in addition to Starr, she's consulted with a number of restaurants, shops, cafes and yoga studios, applying her clean and dynamic aesthetic to interior surfaces, sandwich boards and outdoor A-frames.

"How the space feels has a lot to do with why people go there," she said. "Now, [businesses are] really starting to look at this as an artistic way of incorporating wall space."

According to Franklin, commercial chalk art is so hot right now, thanks at least partially to a renewed general interest in custom-crafted, artistically minded stuff. "You're getting this nice look and feel of signage, just with a hand-done quality," she said.

"Etsy and Pinterest blew that one up," said Miranda Paullin, another local artist considering making chalk art a career. For now, it's a side hustle on the come-up - Paullin is a manager at Square 1682, in the Hotel Palomar, and caught the bug putting together the restaurant's boards, trumpeting special promotions and events in colorful (and water-resistant) chalk marker.

Now, said Paullin, friends and family will reach out to her with photos of potential clients who could benefit from her touch. (She's @chalkitupphilly on Twitter and Instagram.) "They'll text me pictures and say, 'This chalkboard needs help,' " she said. She's added a handful of businesses, like Northern Liberties' Suppa and Hotbox Yoga, in Manayunk, to her roster of recent clients.

While Franklin and Paullin look to provide their services to outside clients, there are plenty of artists who capitalize on their talents at their actual places of employ. Bars and restaurants are looking to social media to increase the reach of this type of art, a trend that caught the attention of Nick Cejas, the social media coordinator for Jose Pistola's and other local and national businesses. (Disclosure: Cejas and I were friends before he launched this curatorial endeavor.)

Recognizing an opportunity to bring like-minded service-industry folks together, Cejas began "Board City," a citywide chalkboard art competition, on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, in July. Competitors used a variety of themes, ranging from Internet memes (a play on the silly "newspaper-reading cat has revelation" trope, from Cheu Noodle Bar's Dustin Jefferson) to high art ("The Persistence of Napoli," dripping Dali-like pizzas from Elliotte Sammartino, of Brigantessa).

"You have a lot of talented people that do have other jobs," said Cejas. "This is an opportunity for those two worlds to meet."

This past Tuesday, the monthlong Board City celebration - you can view all the pieces by searching the #boardcity hashtag on social media - culminated with a party at Pistola's, featuring both a "People's Choice" winner (tallied from likes, shares and retweets) and a selection from a three-person judges' panel. The big-screen TV on Pistola's second floor, usually reserved for sports, ran a slideshow of Board City competitors' work, incredibly elaborate chalk pieces from all sorts of places - Pistola's, Cheu, 1682 and Brigantessa, but also 2nd Story Brewing, Bing Bing Dim Sum, Varga Bar and Jose's sister bar, Sancho Pistola's.

Pistola's own Walker, she of the rained-out Beer Week work, won on the judges' scorecards for her light-hearted Chuck Norris boards and other pieces, with Brittany Sever, of 2nd Story, also earning daps for the punny, intricate drawings she put together for the Old City craft brewpub. ("YOU SHALL NOT PABST," declared Lord of the Rings wizard Gandalf on one particularly awesome entry.)

"I get a lot of business cards," said Sever of the interest her chalkboard work has garnered. She plans to intermingle chalking gigs with her diagnostic medical imaging studies at CCP.

Desirée Howie, of Bing Bing, whose cartoon-y anthropomorphized dumplings earned her the peoples'-choice ovation by a strong measure, also has started being approached by potential clients who want her stuff - plenty of weddings and events. "I like the fact that it's temporary," said Howie, who took it in stride recently when a tot wiped his chubby little kid hand down a freshly completed board in the Passyunk dim sum parlor's dining room.

Sammartino, the board-sketching Brigantessa bartender, experienced a similar blow recently, when his boss accidentally wiped away an illustration he was particularly fond of to make room for something new. All in the game when you specialize in art's most fleeting medium. "It's a bummer," he said. "But nothing is forever."