The Project
Thank you for your interest in our inaugural 2021 event, Walk the Chalk. We are so excited to bring a little joy and playful color to our community, and together, it will be a really fun project for Bend. Artists who volunteer will produce live art during the event day and it will be left for the community to view for approximately ten days after the event, after which it will be responsibly cleaned to prevent any misuse of the plaza and art.
The Goals
Our goals with this project are to bring a little color to Bend and reunite the community through art. We are being generously hosted by The Commons off of Brook Street in Downtown Bend, and each artist’s square will be contrived from the smoothest portions of the Brooks Street Plaza. We are also intending to raise money for the Scalehouse project through donations gathered from businesses as they sponsor each square.
Each square will be sponsored by a local business, and each artist will donate their time to produce a piece for the sponsoring business. It must include the business name, and certain tiers of donations will have some input on content and overall look of the piece, but outside of that, the design is up to the artist.
We look forward to hosting your talents for our inaugural event, and appreciate your time and effort!
The Team
About Kristen
Kristen has been a resident of Bend, Oregon since 2010, when she relocated here with her now-husband. She has always drawn and produced art from a young age, and her passion has always been pen and ink. Lettering was a natural transition with her background in design, and her love of fonts.
She produced chalkboards for her own wedding in 2013 and was convinced by her caterer to go into business with her lettering. Now, she produces work as Chalked Creative for many local businesses, as well as weddings and private events. Kristen also produces logo work, branding, and design for a variety of businesses, and has done work for COCC, OSU, Crater Lake Spirits, BendMapCo. and much more.
Her work is inspired by people around her, things she sees, and her imagination. She is a graphic designer, font nerd, and professional chalk artist. She specializes in chalk art for weddings, events and businesses, and brand design, page layout and ad design. In her free time she dabbles in other art mediums as well.
About Kelly
Kelly Thiel is a full-time artist, specializing in ceramic sculpture and acrylic paintings. Her award-winning sculptures have been exhibited internationally, and are in many private collections throughout the United States. Her paintings have also received accolades and can be seen in galleries on both the east and west coasts. Kelly has been featured in several magazines locally, and was on the cover of Bend Magazine in 2019 for a project she was doing with Athleta at Old Mill.
Kelly loves giving back to the community through classes and workshops on both the east and west coasts, but also through local community projects and fundraisers with her art. She has been fortunate enough to work with Healing Reins Therapeutic Riding Center, Basecamp Studios, the Portrait Connection, and other smaller organizations. She has recently started doing more murals locally, one at Blissful Spoon downtown, one at Immersion Brewing in the Box Factory, and another at Bend UpCycle on 3rd Street in Bend, OR.
Kelly moved to Bend in 2014 from the South Carolina. While she will always be a southern girl, Kelly has really come to love the wild and raw landscape of Central Oregon. When she isn’t at the studio, she can be found snowboarding, exercising, and playing with her funny pit bull terrier and two kids.