Wheelies, Skids and Bunny Hops Yield Chalk Art at Northern Spark Festival

Wynne Yelland, a co-owner of the East Harriet firm , was on the greenway Saturday evening helping two-wheeled attendees of the make chalk tread prints using only their bicycles.

Locus had teamed up with Artcrank to design the process for making the free prints: A dusting of chalk on paper, a pattern of treadmarks produced by riding a bike over the paper, the removal of excess chalk via vacuum, the preservation through a coat of Fixatif.

Techniques and patterns varied—bunny hops, skids and wheelies were among the more exotic approaches—but participants all had a direct hand (or wheel) in the creation of their print.

Yelland said Locus tries to do something fun like giving out bike tread prints twice a year to engage the community.

You need absolutely no talent at all to make this kind of neat thing—it’s as simple and easy as riding a bike,” he said. “When you’re riding over it, you don’t know what it’s going to look like.”

Jenna Vissell of Minneapolis used the strategy of “straight and steady” to craft her tread print.

“I’m going to put it up on my wall,” she said.