Whichever students and other members of the community felt like stopping by helped contribute to the chalk drawing along the concrete driveway lining the lawn in front of the museum. FlyBy found the walk through time, though done with simple materials, to be epic in its own right. It has not been washed away by the dust of time yet, so if you have the time, it is worth checking out.
"The idea is to just highlight the amazing history of life on earth and just have fun and combine art and science into a community project," said event organizer and EPS graduate student Phoebe A. Cohen.
Sidewalk Sam, a 70-year-old Boston-area artist, helped rally the troops of science nerds and other lovers of the origins of life who came out for the event. He said that he was glad to headline the event because it represents three different ages—the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and GCenozoic—which together encompass hundreds of millions of years in the history of life.
Sam explained in an interview that though he originally hoped to become a painter, in his late 20s he "began to see a problem with traditional painting."
It was too caught up in tradition—arts for art's sake—and it left billions of people outside of art—people who are poor and hungry and meek. And I thought, 'Why doesn't art speak up for them, and not just for the art elite?'
More of Sidewalk Sam's story after the jump.
Sam, who then still went by Bob Guillemin, decided to try to do both sidewalk painting and regular painting, but the art world shunned him, he said. "The art world said, 'Wait, you want us to sell your art in the gallery, and then at the same time you're doing art on the ground for free in chalk. It disappears. We can't have you doing art on the sidewalk.'"
Then, when 30, "I made the cataclysmic decision to go with the sidewalks and ignore art as I was brought up to do," he said.
Sam explained that he has made his living by spending 15 to 20 percent of his time painting portraits for corporations and individuals, and also by applying for grants and stipends, but otherwise he has done what he enjoys most: sidewalk art.
The event cost about $4,000, mostly for supplies which the museum mostly paid for, according to Cohen, one of the event's organizers. The General Education program, which advertised the event on its Web site and Twitter, contributed about $300.
More pictures of the sidewalk through time here.
- The Harvard Museum of Natural History, the starting point of the walk of life.