CLEVELAND: Lorain artist, Dante Rodríguez, showcases his artistic style at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) 20^th annual Chalk Festival.  This year’s Chalk Festival will take place on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday Sept. 13, from noon to 5 p.m. on the museum’s south side, including the Fine Arts Garden winding down to Wade Lagoon. 
 

Rodríguez will be creating his chalk masterpiece at the Tremont Arts and Cultural Festival on Saturday, Sept. 12, from noon to 5 p.m. Rodríguez’s art consists of charcoal drawings and paintings, but he also loves to work with paper mäché. 

Rodríguez said his art is like life, ‘simple and complex at the same time,’ and it is life that drives him and guides him to see things in a new way. 

His works have been featured in the CMA’s NEO 2005: The Art and Artists exhibit, as well as the Cleveland State University Art Gallery, Buzz Gallery, the Martin Luther King Jr. branch of the Cleveland Public Library, and is represented in local private collections. 

Rodríguez has been a featured artist in past Chalk Festivals drawing his dog, Shiva, a three-legged cat and a two-headed conjoined portrait of a friend.  He is looking forward to participating in the 20^th annual Chalk Festival because he said it is fun to draw on the sidewalk and it makes him feel like a kid again.

Art has always come naturally to Rodríguez because he has drawn and colored his whole life.  This made the decision to pursue a B.A. in studio arts at Cleveland State University an easy one. Since graduation, he has been active in the local arts community and has been working as a mountmaker at the CMA for the past eight years where he fabricates armatures for objects to be displayed.