In May of 2017, I temporarily retired from chalk art due to severe complications with my auto-immune disorder, both in the UC and the liver departments. I turned down the Denver Chalk Art Event in 2018 and was content to pretty much give it all up when out of the blue, I received three job requests within the same week.
Still not entirely stable, I took a leap of faith and accepted two of them. It just so happened that they ended up being back-to-back, with only one day separating them. Oh, and did I mention, they were in two different states?
It’s not the first time I’ve done back-to-back like this. I did back-to-back Dennison, Ohio and Crested Butte. We did back-to-back St. Paul, Minnesota and Alamosa. But this was the first time I was this compromised.
To complicate the story, after signing the contract, my liver goes into epic failure and I ended up getting an external drainage tube placed into my side. I’m going to have to do these chalk art events with a tube in my side! Then, a week before boarding a plane, I nearly lose my life in the ER due to an infection as a result of complications with my liver disease. I was this close to calling in and cancelling the job.
But we toughed through it, tube in side and all (I had to get a tube photo in…). The docs loaded me up on antibiotics and I hopped on a plane and by God’s grace, and with Cherish’s laboring help, we found a way to power through it and pull off this wonderful, epic masterpiece. Total illusion from top to bottom is 25 feet. Side to side is 12 feet. Our biggest and most epic piece to date. The people of Montana were extremely gracious, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. I definitely want to go back, chalk art event or not. But, as soon as we finished, we hopped on a plane and the next day we did our event in Aurora. But you’ll have to go to the Globalfest page to read up on that.
