Shenandoah Valley Street Art: VA Street Art Festival 2016 in Waynesboro

E-N Computers hosted the second annual Virginia Street Arts Festival on August 27 

I got there at 10:30 a.m., the listed time for painting to start, in order to get some "before" photos.  Since it was already stupid hot and the event hadn't actually started, I only stayed long enough to grab a few shots before heading back to the comfort of climate control.

 I saw the preliminary layout marked on the building the day before, and was surprised to see how much color had already been filled in. I was also completely stoked to see Nils Westergard up there on the ladder.  His work is really beautiful, and I recognized it from his stuff in Richmond.

Daniel Rossi painted this mural earlier this year, but I hadn't seen it, so I grabbed a shot for you guys.

"Before" shot of the opposite side of the building 

Daniel Rossi had come and gone in my absence, leaving behind this guy.

This thing was billed as a family event, so I came back around 4 p.m., which was my best guess at a high traffic time for such a thing.  I was really wrong. There was a small crowd watching Lady Taij's amazing performance with varying levels of enthusiasm and a handful of people milling around and looking miserable because of the obscene heat.

Lady Taij was killing it! She tied with Nils Westergard as the highlight of this event for me.

I'm not sure what the goal was here.

The chalk wall looked really fun, but it was a million percent too hot for me to participate.

I truly hope there was a point in the day where this was less sad.

The progress on the mural by 4 p.m. was impressive

The finished mural. I commend the balls necessary to present Waynesboro with a two-story nude. The plant censorship was unintentional.

I saw a few photos on Facebook that made it look like things picked up after dark, but that was the extent of my experience at the festival.  I came back on Monday to get photos of the finished work, but the only new things were Daniel Rossi's woodpecker that I'd already seen and Nils Westergard's mural - which is truly breathtaking.

Oh, and this heartfelt missive from a local tagger:

More street art content can be found here.